I just came back from a family wedding. Jon’s nephew got married. For many reasons it was bitter/sweet. To begin with, going anywhere without Jon is always like a large piece of me is missing. But today I had the wonderful gift of having all 4 of our kids and my 2 kids thru marriage with me. It was a day I will treasure forever.
Many memories flooded my mind. The earliest memory was when my own children were a Jr. Bridesmaid and Bible Boy for my brothers wedding. They were only 3 and 6 at the time. I was married to their dad and… life was normal. It wasn’t too long after that when things started to turn upside down and nothing has been normal ever since.
I suddenly jumped to Jon’s and my wedding where we started our journey of blending our families. It was a beautiful day where I can still visualize the feeling that from here on life was going to be perfect. We included the kids in the wedding as they walked in with us, all 6 of us lit a unity candle and the 4 of them say “Love Will Be Our Home”. Talk about having unrealistic expectations! But cute none the less.
Our 1st 2 weeks as Jon swept me away to Hawaii for our honeymoon was exactly that, a dream come true. I was convinced we were going to be the ones who would break the statistics and do everything right. But I soon discovered no matter how many books I read, family meetings we held and hard work we put into it, time was the biggest contributing factor. Don’t get me wrong, we did a lot right, but bottom line is blending just simply takes time.
As I watch them now on the dance floor I am treasuring the gift of a family very well blended. They are best friends, they each have had their step siblings as their maid of honor and best man. They laugh, they cry, sometimes at the same time! As we retreated back to our hotel room for the night we put 3 in each double bed, turned off the lights and found ourselves in total belly laughter for the next 2 hours. As I laid there I sent a quick prayer up to God thanking him for such a blessing and shed a tear telling Jon that I knew we would all be ok and how grateful I am for the beautiful family that we created. A job very well done my love, very well done.
