The Bridesmaid

“One month left! Can you believe it? In one month, I’ll be Scott’s wife! After all these years together, we are finally starting a life together! I can’t wait…”

“Yeah, it’s going to be a beautiful wedding.”

Brides really do to glow or at least Christine was. She and Scott had been dating for years now and had lived together for the past three. Six months ago Scott had proposed and Christine had ecstatically accepted. Then she had asked Amanda to be one of her four bridesmaids; Amanda accepted the honor.

The only problem was that Amanda felt as though she was lying to one of her best friends. A bridesmaid’s job was to support the bride and to be there for her no matter what. Amanda however thought that this marriage was a mistake.

Amanda and Christine had been friends for years and one of the best things about their friendship is that they both tried to always be honest with each other. Sometimes this led to hurt feelings or even on occasion to angry outbursts, but afterwards they would both let things go and move on.

Scott and Christine had been dating even before Amanda and Christine were friends and at first, Amanda hadn’t thought much of Scott. He seemed childish and crude and he often acted as though he was superior to women. Needless to say, Amanda didn’t think he was much of a catch.

However, he was Christine’s boyfriend and out of respect Amanda hadn’t said anything against him. As the years passed and Amanda had got to know him better, she started to see that he wasn’t such a bad guy after all. Scott had his faults, but he wasn’t mean-spirited.
Now they were getting married and Amanda couldn’t shake the feeling that it was a bad idea. Standing on the sidelines and watching the relationship between Scott and Christine unfold over the years Amanda saw a lot of underlying problems just waiting to surface.

Both of them had changed in their time together and neither of them seemed aware of that. Scott had decided that he could prove himself only through success in his work and Christine definitely came in second to his ambitions, as would his future children. As for Christine, she had found herself and become stronger than she had ever believed she could be. The only problem was that she doubted herself and looked to Scott to justify her life. Both of them knew that their relationship was less than it should be, but after all of these years together neither of them wanted to walk away from this investment.

Like so many others, they had come to a point where a decision needed to be made and they had shied away from making it. They were taking the next step believing that marriage would solve their problems for them. They saw marriage as a destination rather than a journey and Amanda was terrified that it would lead to heartbreak for both of them.

To Amanda it seemed to be all laid out before them: they would marry and nothing would really change between them, so they would then decide to have children thinking that that would solve the problems. Then when the children only made the issues that much worse, Scott would turn to his work completely and Christine would be left to raise the kids. Christine would constantly try to bring Scott back into their family life and she would continuously fail to do so. Eventually she would stop trying, grow depressed and decide that when the children were old enough that she would leave. Twenty years into their marriage, they would divorce and Christine would try to restart her life in her fifties. Alone and lonely she would remarry and never find true happiness.

This is what Amanda saw in Christine’s future, but she didn’t know what to do about it. Christine was stubborn and any attempts to convince her that this marriage was a mistake would only lead to her determination to prove that marrying Scott was the best thing she’d ever do.

Was it right to act as a bridesmaid when you believed that the wedding would be the only nice part of the marriage? Was it not lying to support a friend in a decision that you believed would ultimately ruin your their life? What did it mean to be a true friend?

A friend stood by you no matter what and believed in your right to make your own decisions in life. It was also a friend’s duty to tell you the truth even when it was hard to do so. So where did that leave Amanda?

One month remained until Scott and Christine took their vows and pledged themselves to living one life between the two of them. Amanda felt trapped; she wanted to say something, but didn’t believe that she had the right to interfere. Could she stand by and watch Christine make the biggest mistake of her life?

Perhaps the only thing to do was to trust in Christine’s judgment and pray that this marriage would work. Maybe a true friend was someone who knew their limits in another’s life and simply stood unquestionably by their side.

Amanda would pray for Christine, for Scott and for their children.

After all, that’s the only thing she was allowed to do.