Learning the hard way

On Saturday afternoon I had gone to watch my son play baseball. When I returned my wife said in a panicky tone, "We've been trying to find you for an hour and a half. You were supposed to do a wedding this afternoon. Did you forget?"

My heart sank to my feet.

Immediately the rationalizations formed: it was a small wedding, the rehearsal took place several days before the ceremony, I had another wedding that day, it was on a Saturday—my usual day off. But the bottom line was, I forgot the most important event in the life of a couple in our church. There was no valid excuse.

I felt like such a loser. How could I have possibly made such a stupid mistake?

I learned that the wedding had been delayed for a few minutes and an associate minister had substituted for me so that the ceremony could proceed. But I knew I needed to apologize, so I quickly changed into a suit and drove an eternal 10 minutes to the church building, knowing the couple would probably be getting their ...