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.