convinced.

One week ago today, I married the right person.
I am so at peace knowing this for sure. For all the worrying and dating and agonizing and waiting and over-analyzing of every relationship decision I ever made (and I made several wrong ones) this might be the greatest relief of my life; to know beyond any doubt that I chose the right husband.
I knew we were compatible before he proposed, I confidently said my vows before God and many witnesses at our ceremony, but then on the day we got home to Wheaton my heart nestled into a place of incredible security that we did not err on this decision to be married and the vows we made to stay together until death separates us.
I am Tim's wife, and I was never supposed to belong to anyone else.

We did it

a little bitter and a lot of sweet

How are you supposed to feel 4 days before your wedding? I keep asking myself this. We've had a crazy week around here.

Nine days ago, while on a mission trip to Guinea, West Africa, Tim's brother Marc started having terrible headaches. They progressed to the point that the team there decided to send him home to France. This was a terrible worry for Tim's family because they were not in France to welcome him home, they were here in Florida getting ready for our wedding. It took 5 hours in a bush taxi,  an overnight stay in a national hospital in Conakry, Guinea, a flight to Paris, and an 8 hour train ride to get Marc to the hospital near home in Grenoble where he was diagnosed with a form of hydrocephalus. Due to a hardened and malfunctioning valve that regulates cerebro-spinal fluid levels inside Marc's skull, fluid was building up pressure to dangerous levels and causing him terrible pain. He had to have emergency brain surgery to drain the fluid and release the pressure, and his family was an ocean away from his bedside.

This was heartbreaking. A mother's worst nightmare, to say the least. Marc made it through surgery and woke up with great relief from pain, but the doctors were not satisfied with the results and fear they will have to go in again to implant a permanent shunt inside Marc's skull to continue to drain out the excess fluid.

After much deliberation and agonizing, Tim's mother decided to fly home to France to be with Marc. On Wednesday morning, 7 days before our wedding,  Tim flew into Tampa and got to spend one hour with his mom in the airport terminal before her flight left for France.

To say that we are sad that these two precious family members will not be at our wedding would be an understatement. I can't even talk about it without crying. We grieve the loss of their presence even in these preparation days, but that grief is little compared to the relief and peace we all feel that Marc is not alone.  

There will be two empty chairs at our ceremony, and no one is allowed to sit in them.

A wise pastor of mine once said that in these hard situations, we are not to ask "Why, God?" It's not our business to know His reasons.  Instead, we should ask "What are you doing? How can I join in and be part of your plan?"

I keep asking this, and for now all I know to do is to marry Tim and have the sweet little beach wedding we've been planning. So today we wrote our vows and I picked up my wedding dress and Tim's ring and then we took the families down to the very important beach to scope out what our ceremony time will look like.

It should make for a nice backdrop, no? We're getting married here because decorating stresses me out and I figured the heavens could do it for me instead.

So that's what wedding week looks like here. Our first guest arrives today and it's all madness from there. Here we go.

the only good use of a Nicholas Sparks novel

I loathe Nicholas Sparks for his crimes against women's emotional expectations of romance and healthy relationships. So I'm destroying his book in order to create these flowers for my wedding. How's that for romance, Nikky?

something old

When I was little, my family would sometimes spend summers in the USA at my grandparent's house in Alabama. Mimi and Opa had lived in their house since my mom was a baby, so the house was a museum of artifacts from the 1950's onward. Especially the basement.
The basement had a pool table, a workshop, two guest bedrooms, a storage room, and a sewing room. In one of the guest rooms, there was a cedar chest. In that cedar chest was a large collection of TIME magazines and newspapers from important dates in history like the Pearl Harbor attack, Kennedy's assassination, and the USA's first lunar landing. All this was plenty to keep my 11 year old self occupied for an entire afternoon.
One day I got through all the magazines and newspapers and dug deeper into the cedar chest, passed unframed paintings and old certificates. My hands brushed soft lace and I uncovered my grandmother's wedding dress.
This was such a priceless find, and for some reason I thought I would get in trouble for removing it from the chest. I shut the door to the guest room and laid the dress out on the bed. It was yellowed with age and crumpled from being folded in the same position for decades. In some places, the threads had simply given out.
I listened for any activity upstairs, and when I heard none, I wiggled out of my summer playclothes and slipped the dress over my head. I didn't even need to unzip the metal zipper. Since there was only a vanity mirror in the room, I pushed a chair in front of it and stood on the seat to take a look at myself in my Mimi's dress. It was so long on me that the tea length hem brushed my toes. The scoop neck hung loose and repeatedly fell off my shoulder. I was fascinated with the story I was wearing all around me. All of the people in my life and the love that holds them together was decided one October day in 1951 when my grandmother wore this very dress that her mother sewed for her and pledged her life to my grandfather. I would not be if not for that day and that covenant. It was just too cool.
I put the dress back and never told anyone I had worn it. A few years later my aunts had the dress cleaned and restored and surprised Mimi by displaying it at their 50th wedding anniversary reception.  It was nice to see it white again.
When I knew that Tim was going to propose, Mimi's dress was my top choice in wedding dresses, but I heard that the condition of the dress was too poor for me to wear. Even though I found another perfect wedding dress, I still wanted to display Mimi's at our wedding, so my Mom graciously had it shipped down to Florida from Alabama.
When I got here last week to get everything ready for our wedding, I bee-lined to Mom's closet and got Mimi's dress down and unwrapped it. Mom helped me slip it on over my head and pull the zipper up the side.
This time, it fit perfectly.