Won't You Ride on With Me?: 2012

Friday, November 23, 2012

Catching Up

"Planning" a wedding is fun.
"Financially/Family planning" a wedding is cumbersome and daunting and draining.
I am glad it all came together as it did, and I am glad it is over.

It is hard work to fold another family into this already fragile, patch-worked family. We (meaning... me, my kids, my side of the family, James' family: both mom's side and dad's side, and allllll of those caveats...) have our own issues with each other (irks and whatnots) and add another family, into an already perhaps emotionally charged situation....there will be 'moments.' Despite my best super human attempts to avert them, they still happened. Men are still men, women are still catty. But the hearts that matter most in that equation are the ones in love, and the ones loving these 3 little girls, and there was a wedding to be had.

Nick is a fairy tale by all definitions. He had met James years ago, when Nick had just returned from Iraq and James was just enlisting, and gave James his Marine Corps handbook. When he heard James had died, he said: "I am so sorry Meggie. I wish I could of talked to him." He is the ONLY person to say this. Maybe it was the Marine thing, an understanding... of PTSD, of that side of the mind. Maybe it was the first person who wasn't just 'sorry' for me but someone who was willing to really, truly to come along side me (and James) to know the dirty painful truth of mental illness, and walk it with us, even if it was just picking up the pieces.

He met my mom years ago too. This means that each of the souls that stake claim on this heart, have met here on earth, and that give me an amazing sense of peace.

And what I know is this, and I guess I have know this all along, it's just made more clear with each new event: Blood is not thicker than water. Family is absolutely who make themselves a priority in your life. Guilt is not a guiding factor of the foundation of a family, but it sure helps define the purpose of some relationships, and can be terribly revealing. Is one's purpose to talk or to be understood? To be right or to be heard?

Good choices, good friends, and faith are my backbone. I would be nothing without any of these, and wouldn't have been able to find any of these without the others.

Happy Thanksgiving dear friends and family. Thank YOU for keeping me accountable, heading mostly forward on my winding path.Thank you for reminding me that I deserve to have good friends, who build me up. We ALL do.