Wedding News

I'm counting down the days until I can see my Mommy again. She's talking now (through a valve on her trach tube), and I can hardly wait to talk to her and have her respond! I miss her so much. Several times a day I find myself thinking, "Mom would have good advice about this," or "Mom would know what to do about that," or "I wish I could tell Mom about this."

FavoriteBoy and I chose and purchased our wedding bands last weekend, and we went and picked them up today. They're beautiful.

A truly wonderful thing has happened with regards to our weddings (yes... plural!). Our pastor is going to be present at both ceremonies to marry us! We never imagined such generosity. We had arranged for him to officiate at our wedding in Pennsylvania, and all those plans had already been made, but then my Mom was hospitalized and we decided to be married in California where she is. We had been trying to figure out who could marry us out there. We both hoped to be married by someone we both know. Our pastor here is wonderful, and Nathan is on the church staff with him, and we've enjoyed getting to know him further through our premarital counseling sessions. We met with him this week, and before we even had a chance to speak with him about our wedding plans he offered to come to California to marry us there! He's not even letting us reimburse him for most of his expenses. We're amazed. It is really humbling to receive gifts that you can't possibly repay, and lately I've been learning a lot about that.

The not-so-good news is that I'm having a harder time holding things together with each passing day. This week we passed the four-week mark and the one-month mark since Mom's aneurysm, and it's been really hard. I think I naively hoped that Mom would be much better by now! And in a way, I think that things are only now beginning to really sink in. I keep realizing little things -- things I've known for several weeks but haven't really processed. Mom won't be in our PA wedding pictures. Mom won't hear our harpist or our choir or our other music. Dad probably won't be there to walk me down the aisle. I'll have to tell the florist to cancel one of the mothers' corsages. And while I think we have made a good decision concerning our wedding plans, I also think it is going to be really hard.

In the midst of the sadness, though, there is a lot of goodness. My Mom is alive, and her mind is clever and witty and intelligent. I get to see her in ten days. I get to have a wedding with my Mom there, my Dad there, and my sister and brothers there. My sister wasn't going to be at the PA wedding since she is expecting a baby shortly after our wedding date, so it's wonderful that she will be present at our marriage after all.

And then there's just the general goodness of getting married, too. It's all so good I feel guilty to be receiving so many blessings! A group of women from Nathan's church in PA had a shower for us when we were there for Thanksgiving, and we came back to Massachusetts with mixing bowls, a tea kettle, cutting boards, hand sewn Christmas stockings, wall clocks, kitchen gadgets, a waffle iron, a picnic hamper filled with picnicking things, and more! It seems too good to be true that we get to get married, and other people are so excited for us that they shower us with blessings!