My View on Marriage

         Something occurred after my last post that I didn't expect. For starters, I have long suspected that my blog was pretty much off the radar. That only those who knew me personally had any desire to read it. That being said I have not hidden my blog so I am aware that the outside world can and probably does access it. I am not one of these savvy bloggers with a tracker that can tell me who is accessing the site. Truthfully, I don't really care. I write because I enjoy and it helps me to saying things that sometimes I can't say out loud. So I was surprised this morning when I received a comment on my last post from someone who doesn't know me and I felt the need to respond to what the person said. Here is the comment:

My advice to you is that if it's important that your family be at your wedding. Then change your plans to do that. You don't to start your marriage with that in the back of your mind because you wanted it to be different.

Be mindful that the wedding itself is not the biggest part of the marriage. In fact, in hindsight, it's the least important if you plan on being married forever. So don't start out the marriage in a bad state because of resentment over the wedding.

        The very first thing I want to say is that I have absolutely no resentment what so ever to the idea of eloping. As a matter of fact, it was my idea. I was frustrated with trying to plan a wedding. I felt like I was having to work around everyone else's schedules and that the day was no longer about me and the sheriff but about appeasing my family. I love my family but there are times when I am glad that I live 700 miles away from them. At the same time when I go long periods of time without seeing them, I get sad. It has been 6 months since the last time I went home and it will still be another month and a half before I get to see them again. I have also been dealing with my only family member that lives near by, my brother, being deployed since August. He is due to return home in a few weeks. His presence here in Texas helps to combat my homesickness so without him here, I have missed my family more than normal. The truth is I know I could pick the phone right now and tell my mother I wanted them at the wedding and she would book a hotel room in Tennessee in 3 weeks. Honestly, that is not what I want. I want the sheriff and I to have time alone. Our entire relationship has been spent juggling work and family and church and school and everything else we have going on. I am not complaining about that because that is reality but it is nice to get a break from that occasionally.

        The second thing that I want to comment on is the wedding not being the biggest part of the marriage. Those who know me know what I have been through over the last couple of years with the breakup of my first marriage. Those who don't can read through my archives and get a pretty good idea of what I felt during that time. I am very well aware that the wedding is not the biggest part of the marriage. The sheriff and I have been preparing ourselves for our marriage since before we got engaged. There has been much discussion on how we want to live our lives together and we have been in classes through our church in order to even better prepare ourselves. Having both been married before, we know what to expect and are definitely not approaching this blindly. We have learned a lot from our past experiences which I think will help to make us stronger as a couple. To me, the wedding is a technicality. It is the legal representation of what we already know and feel. One of the big reasons that we decided to elope was for that very reason. Neither one of us felt that we had to have a big wedding to make our marriage what we want it to be. This is about us and frankly that is all that matters.

        Three weeks from tomorrow I will marry my sheriff and I couldn't be more excited. The day will be perfect and my family will celebrate from a distance. And I truly believe we will live happily ever after.