Blue Heart Blessed Read Free

years. No one particularly special. No one who Harriet really liked, if you know what I mean. And I was kind of counting on meeting a nice Christian guy at college. When you spend the money my parents did for an education at a private Christian college, you tend to expect it. Anyone who doesn’t is not being completely truthful, as Harriet would say. Actually she would say they were lying.
    But I graduated with my marketing and graphic design degree without a ring on my finger. I was a bridesmaid three times over that summer. I pretended this did not bother me but Harriet knew better. After one of the weddings I wrote in my journal : I feel all mixed up inside. I mean, I’m happy for Lindsey. And she looked so beautiful today. I loved her dress. But something’s keeping me from being completely happy for her. It’s like I wanted her to trip down the aisle or wake up with pink eye this morning. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
    And Harriet wrote back… Yes, you do. You’re jealous.
    Tell me I didn’t already know that.
    My Harriet is no different than the voice you have inside of you, telling you the truth even when it hurts.
    And oh, how it does hurt. I have three whole notebooks on loving Daniel and losing him. Writing them killed me. And kept me alive.
    I’m halfway through the fourth.
    I will write in it tonight after my mom and I have closed up Something Blue. After she chides me for lying to Lucille about not seeing her take my dress off its mannequin. After I’ve watched a cheesy chick flick. After I’ve called my best friend Shelby, who is also my ex-maid of honor.
    I will crawl into bed with a cup of tea and I will tell Harriet that I had a chance to sell my wedding dress today and blew it.
    And she will write back… So what else is new?

Three
    I made my first bride paper doll when I was nine. Her name was Elisabeth with an ‘s’ and she was skinny, ridiculously flat-chested and had my boring brownish-blonde hair—a shade produced by combining burnt sienna and maize Crayola crayons in thick, waxy layers. Elisabeth was cut from white tag boardI bought at the drugstore with my own money.
    My limited drawing capabilities produced her scrawny arms that stuck out at forty-five-degree angles. She looked like an informant being frisked. The open arms made it difficult for Elisabeth to hold the many varieties of bridal bouquets I made, but honestly, the attempts to give her arms bent at the elbow were laughable. I nearly ran out of tag board and patience before I realized I had set the bar way too high for myself.
    I made Elisabeth’s wedding gown before any other article of clothing, cutting it from wedding wrapping paper and gluing swirls of glitter onto its massive, lampshade-shaped skirt. Unskilled at that age in spatial relationships, it never occurred to me that the copious amounts of fold-over tabs I included on the skirt would never be anywhere near Elisabeth’s body. The dress had to hang onto Elisabeth with tiny, baby-tooth sized tabs at the shoulders and waist, and so it was forever falling off of her. The veil, bedecked with daisies—what else?—sprouted from Elisabeth’s head like a geyser, but I remember being fairly pleased with the end result and showing Elisabeth to my mother when the ensemble was finished.
    Mom had oohed and ahhed over the dress as well as Elisabeth, who I held stone-still in my hand so that the dress didn’t fall off.
    “You should make her a trousseau,” Mom had said.
    I had responded by asking her what a “true sew” was. I distinctly recall picturing those words in my head just like that. Mom went on to tell me a bride’s trousseau was the collection of new clothes she took on her honeymoon.
    Well, that seemed like a pretty good idea to me. I set to work on a fascinating wardrobe of checked skirts and tops, evening gowns with ruffles and lace and sundresses with matching hats. When I was done with all the clothes, I proudly showed them to my mother.
    “How