For Everything There is a Season

"In order to write about life, first you must live it." ~ Ernest Hemingway

Category: marriage (Page 2 of 3)

Our Wedding Ceremony

May 24, 2013 / / 12 Comments

“I promise to always be your best friend. The person you can count on to confide in and to lift you up when you are down. I will be the gentle hand in the middle of the night and your port in every storm. I promise to do my best to make the rest of our lives together full of joy and laughter. I will always honor our marriage and I will love you all the days of my life.” ~ Me
  
 
May 18, 2013

Until that day, I never believed that there was such a thing as a perfect day. I wasn’t looking for perfection. At some points in the seventeen months preceding that day, I was just looking to make it to the day in one piece.
 
Until that day, I never believed it was possible to live so fully in the moment that my mind could be free of any other thoughts.
 
Until that day, I never quite fully understood the magnitude of the love that surrounds my husband and I.
 
May 18, 2013 was our wedding day. For those of you who know me or follow my blog on a regular basis, you know that it was no small feat to get to this day. 2012-early 2013 plagued my husband Chuck and I with crisis after crisis; from me being almost paralyzed and then developing life threatening blood clots in my lungs to the illness and death of Chuck’s mother. There was also a lot of other bad stuff in between. Yet despite those events, we continued to plan our wedding day. We felt it was important to celebrate our love with those in our lives. We had made a decision to split up the ceremony and reception into two separate events to make it more manageable with my autoimmune illness. The reception is still to come on June 1st.
 
 
I have always been a big believer in the fact that it is the marriage, and not the wedding itself, that is the priority. Keeping that attitude in mind, I approached May 18th with a fierce determination to not allow myself, or us as a couple, to lose sight of the significance of what we were doing. And like all weddings, there were issues. Due to ending a friendship, I lost a bridesmaid two months before the wedding. There was a phone call less than 72 hours before the wedding that none of the flowers I had picked out for the groom and groomsmen were available. People I was expecting and hoping would attend were either unable to attend for various reasons or made a choice not to attend.  But when I woke up that morning at 5:30am, none of it mattered. What did matter was that by 1:45pm, this man whom I love with every fiber of my being, was going to be my husband.
 
 
I will admit, the day before was tough on me physically. Everything went very well; we got the church parish hall dining room set up like we wanted for the dessert and coffee hour we were having after the ceremony and the rehearsal/rehearsal dinner went off without a hitch. But the day was a busy one and we were both exhausted. Chuck spent that night at a hotel because he knew it was important to me that we not see each other before the ceremony the next morning. My friend Nicole, who was a bridesmaid, stayed overnight with me but unfortunately I was too exhausted when we got home at 9pm from the rehearsal dinner to even be social. Sorry Nicole!
 
 
The next morning found me spending three hours at a salon with Nicole and my maid-of-honor, Chuck’s daughter Stephanie. It was a beautiful day out. 73 degrees and sunny with a slight breeze. I was a bit nervous, probably more from anticipation than anything else. I truly enjoyed this time at the salon with them and their excitement was evident. They were amazing as they ensured that every single detail was attended to and I honestly felt that if something bad went down, it would be handled. By the time we got to the church, ten minutes before the start of the ceremony, my nervousness had dissipated and I was excited to see Chuck.
 

 I was having a small issue with my dress and we changed our plans and got to the church earlier than planned. Because it was not yet 1pm, we went to the parish hall to recheck my dress issue and wait. Our parish hall is across the parking lot from the church and I was standing in a room looking out the window to the church and parking lot. It was such a surreal experience to watch our guests come in. Everyone looked so happy. I mean, seriously happy. I stood there and wondered – how did I get so blessed?
 
Chuck and I had put in a lot of thought and effort into the ceremony itself. We wanted it to be personal and we wanted it to convey our love to those in attendance. The ceremony started off by Nicole and Stephanie going down the aisle, escorted by my brother Dennis and one of our friends, Lou. The song was Can You Feel The Love Tonight? by Elton John. Then came a moment we had kept secret from as many people as possible. Chuck played and sang Marry Me by Train as I came down the aisle. It was such a beautiful moment. The guitar chords can be a bit tricky and I know he had been working on the song for months. He did such a great job and I honestly don’t know how either one of us got through the song. It was amazing to see the faces of our loved ones as I walked down the aisle. It was amazing to see my stoic dad with tears in his eyes.



Smiles.
Tears.
Joy.


Since the ceremony, I have had several people mention one word to me and that is: radiant. People thought I looked radiant. The thing is, I felt radiant. At the risk of sounding arrogant I am going to mention that although we only have a small portion of our photos back, there is not a bad photo of me because so far, there is not one where I am not smiling. I just felt so content, so blessed, and so at peace. Funny how true love can do that.


We began to progress through our ceremony. We each had written our own vows. We had asked a couple that we are good friends with, and who have been married for 39 years, to speak about marriage during the ceremony. Our friend, Tom, sang You Raise Me Up during communion. Communion is not an event that many people in our faith incorporate into their wedding ceremony but it was important to us. We elected to present communion to our guests ourselves so I held the (gluten-free!) bread and Chuck held the wine (aka grape juice). Although I had cried before this point while I was saying my vows, it was communion that almost did me in. One of the first people to come up was my Auntie Helen and she was bawling. I could feel her love for us through her tears. And getting to see everyone as they came to the communion table was overwhelming because of the genuine joy and love on their faces.

The ceremony finished up and we exited the church to the sounds of our friend Dan playing We Are Family on the piano. We rang the church bell on the way out.  A receiving line followed and then down to the parish hall dining room to spend time with our loved ones. It was wonderful to be able to see family and friends that I had not seen in a while. We got home around 4pm and immediately finished packing to go away for a few days. Our Disney honeymoon isn’t until September but we wanted to get away and decompress for a few days. That blog will be in the near future hopefully!


If I could sum up the entire day in one sentence I would say this: it was the best day of my entire life. Shocking considering that initially, I really wanted to elope! And I have had some amazing days: the day I graduated from nursing school, the day that Chuck proposed, the day that I found out I was cancer-free, and even the day I was married the first time. But right now May 18th is the best day. The main reason is because of the fact that the day represents that I found and have been blessed with this great love. The man that I feel privileged to spend the rest of my life with. On that day we outwardly got to celebrate our love and the union of our two lives and of our families. The day represented our willingness to work through difficult times and issues in order to commit ourselves, before God, to each other.



It was the best day because of the people who surrounded us and the wedding represented all of the support we have received both individually and as a couple from family, our church family, and our friends. I have so many snapshots in my memory bank of people. I have often told Chuck that when I am in a bad situation with my health and I am feeling down and sick, I often play back positive images in my head of good times we have had together and it helps to relax me and helps me to refocus my energy. Typically it is a memory of Chuck and I on the beach in Maine or some other happy time where I felt loved and safe.


The people in our lives have given me a new image.
The one from our wedding ceremony.
The one where I see their faces and feel their love.
The one where I hear words of joy and sounds of laughter.
The one where I feel an abundance of love, hope, joy, and peace.



I am grateful for this incredible day that we had together. I am grateful for every moment that I chose to not give up on true love. Most importantly, I am grateful for my husband and the beginning of the next chapter of our lives together.


Photos Courtesy of Susan SB Photography: https://www.facebook.com/SusanSBPhotography/info

Keep Going

May 13, 2013 / / 12 Comments

There are very few people who follow my blog or who are even in my life who know the extent of the disaster my life was from about 2001 through 2009. I was in a destructive marriage with a man who was abusive, an alcoholic, had PTSD, and was just a difficult person to live with. A man who decided about two years into our marriage that he did not want children. I had distanced myself from some of my family and many of my friends. I held a job that I loved but yet found very stressful. For some of those years I was seventy-seven pounds heavier than I am now. I had a food addiction and low self-esteem. There were many times when I considered suicide and the threat was real enough that I was hospitalized several times for depression. For a period of time, I was even considered to have bipolar disorder and I was trialed on every class of psychiatric medications that existed. The diagnosis was later retracted by the same psychiatrist who diagnosed me and my mood issues were thought to be the beginning of my autoimmune disorder, coupled with significant environmental stressors. Then the physical symptoms of my autoimmune illness began.

2008-2009 found me very sick with Sjogren’s syndrome. I eventually ran out of sick time and FMLA and lost my job. On the day that my ex-husband threatened me and I thought he was going to be physically violent because he was so drunk, I told him we were done. I got divorced and lost my home. I lost one of my beloved dogs. No job, no home, no kids, no health, no marriage…no nothing.

But wait, I did have something. I had God. I had my family. I had a few friends.

I had myself.

So why am I even bothering to tell you all this six days before I marry my second husband? Because I want people to know. I want to tell anyone reading this who thinks that the only way out is through suicide that there is always a better way out. There is help out there. You can change your situation. The feeling of hopelessness you have now does not mean that things can not get better.

My upcoming marriage has stirred up a lot of emotions recently. Obviously that is due in part to the fact that I am marrying this incredible man who is my best friend and whom I love with all my heart. But the emotions are also there because over the past few weeks, I have stopped to think about where I am and how far I have come. Because at some point I stopped letting myself be a victim. I dealt with my depression and anxiety. I saw a therapist. I developed a positive attitude. An attitude that got me through some pretty dark days. I worked on my relationship with God and with myself. Step by step I made changes in my life that enabled me to be a whole person rather than the empty shell of one that I was during those years.

I still struggle with health issues. I still struggle at times with my self esteem. But at the end of the day I like the face of the person looking back at me in the mirror. Sometimes it is hard for me to think back on the past and even believe that was me. However I have to look back from time to time because those experiences have helped make me the courageous and determined individual I am today.

I am at peace.
I am happy.

So please don’t give up. You are worth more than the sum of your bad experiences. God has put you in this world for a reason. The reason may not be apparent to you now. It may never be apparent to you but I promise you, your presence in this world will make a difference to somebody.

Be strong.
Keep going.

Road To Marriage

January 14, 2013 / / 2 Comments
 
“Become the kind of person the kind of person you would like to marry would like to marry.” ~ Douglas Wilson

Four months from this Friday I will be getting married.
A whole wedding and everything.

This is a big deal.

I know marriage should be a big deal in general, but let’s be honest. In our society today, people get married and divorced more often than many people change jobs. My fiance and I have both been married before so now we are going to be included in the second marriage statistic. You know, the one that says half of all second marriages will end in divorce.

We will not be on the wrong side of those statistics. I’m sure everyone in love says that right before they get married again. Truth be told, I was fine with never getting married again. That was before I met a partner who made me experience real love for the first time.

That is a strange thing to say considering I was married once before and engaged to someone else even before that. My first fiance was this great guy I met at work when I was about twenty-three years old. We started out as co-workers and then became friends. We dated for a while, I moved into his house, we talked about marriage, I got cancer, he proposed, and then four months before the wedding, the bomb dropped.

He told me that he had come to realize that he never truly loved me and had only proposed because I had just finished my cancer treatments and he felt like he was obligated to propose. That is was what he was “supposed” to do. He should have said something sooner he told me.

Nice.
Problem was, I still loved him.

So I moved out of the house, sought refuge at my parent’s home because I was such an emotional wreck and spent the following weeks cancelling all the wedding plans that were already in place. To this day, I do not think he was a bad person. Confused and gutless yes. But not bad. After a while, I decided I was too young to pine away for a man who would never love me. I found my own apartment and continued to throw myself into my career, my family, and my friends.

Enter the next love. My ex-husband. I met my ex-husband approximately eight months after the break up with the ex-fiance and I did not date anybody in between. I am here to tell you that is a big mistake. I would have sworn to you up and down that I was not on the rebound and maybe I wasn’t. I was twenty-eight years old and all of my friends were getting married and having babies. Now I absolutely thought that I loved him and that he loved me but now looking back, I wonder if subconsciously, I was more in love with him or the idea of being in love with him and having the life society tells us we are supposed to have. You know, the one with 2.2 kids and a white picket fence. Because there were signs there that maybe he was not the right person for me but I did not pay attention to those red flags. I wanted to spend my life with someone and raise a family. I thought this was the way to be happy. Tough thing to admit.

Approximately a year after we got married (we had dated for two years prior to getting married), my ex-husband changed in a way that resembled Jekyll and Hyde. He decided that he did not want children after all. His mood started to change dramatically at times, he developed flashbacks, and he was subsequently diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which was a result of severe childhood abuse. Then the heavy drinking started and the only thing more difficult than living with an alcoholic, is living with one that has PTSD.

I tried and I tried as hard as I could to keep my marriage together. Eight long years of trying. I certainly made my share of mistakes during my marriage but none that warranted the way I was treated. I thought that if I loved him enough, he would be able to work through his issues, we would have a family and be happy. Instead, I became an emotionally abused wife. The day that he became violent and I thought he would hit me, I began the journey to becoming his ex-wife.

It was not easy, but I have never looked back.
I was finally free.

Despite the fact that the year prior to separating with my ex-husband I began to get very sick from autoimmune related issues, my life really started to evolve. I took control of my life. After we sold our house, I took one of our dogs, moved into my own apartment and discovered I truly enjoyed living by myself again. No chaos. I spent the following two years figuring out who I was as a person and reshaping my definition of what it meant to be happy and that it did not have to include being married, or even having a partner for that matter. Being happy did not depend on whether I was a mother or not. In that quest to find myself, I truly became happy.

I reconnected with my old friends and I made new ones. I began to write and pursue other interests when I wasn’t dealing with my significant medical issues.. I became involved with my church. I dated quite a bit. I even fell for a guy or two. However after a while, I found dating to be exhausting. As a thirty-nine year old with a severe chronic illness, dealing with the drama associated with dating just became too much. Too many liars, cheaters, and men with severe issues. It wasn’t worth my precious energy. I decided that I was going to be content with living on my own, in a great apartment, with my very cool dog and my wonderful family, friends, and church community surrounding me. I had my head on straight now and I was not going to compromise my happiness, health, or peace of mind for anyone else.

Best laid plans, right?

Then enter Chuck. What is it that they say? That love often happens when you are least expecting or looking for it? If you are interested, you can read our story here: Summer of Friendship…Summer of Love.

I knew within weeks of dating Chuck, that I would spend the rest of my life with him. I didn’t care if that involved marriage. I just wanted to be with him. He had become my best friend and it quickly became apparent to me that I could not imagine spending one day without him in my life. It was a big risk for me and maybe he would say the same thing for himself. The risk of loving again after you have been hurt so deeply in the past is probably one of the biggest acts of courage a person can perform. The difference for me this time though was that I knew I was with the right person. I knew what true love felt like.

The type of true love that makes you want to be an even better person than you already are. The type that supports you and encourages your dreams. The type that makes you want to work through all the very difficult questions and differences between you.The type of love that is ultimately unconditional.

I think I just wrote part of my wedding vows.

I am the woman who said she would never get married again but yet, here I am. Older, wiser, and with eyes wide open. I am the woman who is very glad to be a stronger, confident, and more self aware version of her younger self. One who, when she stands in front of her family and friends committing her life to another on May 18th, will know, with all certainty, that it is possible for marriage to last forever.

Making Love Last A Lifetime

November 7, 2012 / / 1 Comment
 
Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years. ~Simone Signoret

On November 7, 1970, two people pledged their love and commitment to each other. For better, for worse. For richer, for poorer. In sickness and in health.

My mom and dad.

Today, they celebrate forty-two years of marriage. Forty-two years. Can you imagine? I can’t. Maybe because in order to achieve that, my fiance would have to live until he is ninety-seven and I would have to make it until I am eighty-four. Heck, I can’t even picture fifty years old at this point!

But those two people, once in their early twenties, have made it that long and I hope and pray that they make it many more years together.

Like most marriages, their marriage has not been perfect. There have been many arguments and conflicts. There were multiple job losses and sleepless nights. The early years brought very difficult financial times, including standing in line at the A&P supermarket with their food stamps; trying to do whatever it took to keep their heads above water.

Despite the fact that both my brother and I are divorced, we both learned a lot from my parents during those early years and from the years since then. I can’t really speak for him, but they have taught me that marriage is a true partnership. They have demonstrated that with this partnership and a strong work ethic, it is possible to make a better life for yourself and your family. I am proud of how far they have come since those early years.

There have also been a lot of scary moments. A car accident and open heart surgery for my dad. Ovarian cancer and breast cancer for my mom. Moments that caused chaos and rattled the very foundation of our family. Moments that also strengthened their love as a couple.

Until recently, my mom has always been the talker and the emotional one in the partnership when it came to my brother and I, while my dad tends to be more reserved with his feelings. Most of the news and information in the family tends to go through my mother. I think that is true for a lot of families in that generation (they are in their sixties) but yet, when I sit here and think of the expressions of love I have verbally heard expressed in reference to each other, it is my father’s voice that echoes the strongest with me.

The year was 1997. After I had been in remission from a cancer diagnosis, my fiance at the time had suddenly broken off our engagement and relationship. Since we lived in what was originally his house, I went to live with my parents until I could figure out what I was going to do. He had told me that he had realized he had never really loved me. I was emotionally devastated. I remember floating in my parent’s backyard pool telling my dad this and how maybe my ex was just confused and would eventually come to his senses. I know, I know. I was being foolish. My father just looked me straight in the eye and said “Chris, when you love someone, you don’t say things like that. I have never ever told your mother I do not love her.You don’t do that.”

Simple yet profound words.

It has been interesting to watch my parent’s marriage evolve over the years since my brother and I have left the house and especially since they have retired. It seems like in a way, they have renewed the romantic part of their marriage. My mother refers to my dad as “her love” on Facebook and my dad was proudly telling me yesterday on the phone about the large bouquet of flowers he thought to order for my mother to celebrate their anniversary today. All I can say is, “who stole my parents??”

Maybe it is because there is no longer the chaos and stress of working full-time jobs and raising children. Perhaps it is because they now have more time to appreciate each other rather than trying to figure out how to just get through the day and pay the bills. Whatever it is, it makes me happy. It makes me happy to see that despite the odds and despite the challenges this world presents to us every day, true love can win out and last a lifetime.

Thank you mom and dad.

The Value of a Name

July 17, 2011 / / 9 Comments
“My name may have buoyancy enough to float upon the sea of time.”
~ Richard Watson Gilder



My name is Christine Molloy.


A basic yet powerful statement.
One that I have been thinking a lot about lately.
It is my identity.
It is my connection with this world.
It is my legacy.



I was watching an ABC news special one evening last week about Jaycee Dugard. She was the eleven year old girl who was abducted in 1991 at a bus stop by Philip Craig Garrido and held captive for eighteen years. She suffered an unimaginable amount of physical, mental, sexual and emotional abuse by this deranged member of our society. During the interview, she recounted many of the horrific events that happened to her in those eighteen years of captivity, but one thing struck me most significantly. She was forbidden by Garrido to ever speak her name for the eighteen years he held her captive. On August 26, 2009, when law enforcement officials interviewed her (not knowing that she was an abduction victim), one of the first things she did was claim her real name back. She had to write it down for the law enforcement officials as she had not uttered her name in eighteen years. It was the point that she reclaimed herself, both to herself and to the world.




Our names are usually not something we choose for ourselves yet through the years, they start to define who we are, sometimes for the good and sometimes for the bad. Oftentimes, we take them for granted as we go through our day to day lives and it is not until we change our name or it is taken away from us, that we realize its importance. We use our names to identify ourselves as professionals. We use them to demonstrate how we are connected to our spouses, children, and other family members. We use them to make our mark in the world.



When I got engaged and subsequently married in 2000, I had a very difficult time deciding about whether to change my last name or not. I loved being a Molloy. On the one hand, I felt that by changing my name to my future husband’s name, it would unite us as a family, especially with the prospect of having children someday. However I loved my name; it was who I was for twenty-nine years at that point. Why would I want to change how I identified myself?  I did have the option to hyphenate my maiden name with my new husband’s name. Problem was though, I was signing my name anywhere up to about twenty-five times a day on the shifts that I worked as a nurse. Hyphenating it would just make that process that much more tedious. In the end, I did decide to change my name, mostly because the argument about starting a family under one last name seemed to win out. I have to say, it just never felt quite right. 





Nine years later, when I was in the process of divorcing from my now ex-husband, there were so many issues to work out. Between selling the house, lawyer appointments, and figuring out how to start my life all over, there were more things to contend with than I could keep track of. Despite that, there was one issue that I needed to get resolved right away. I would hassle the attorney, the very nice lady at the courthouse office, and all the powers that be. About what? I wanted to know exactly when I was going to get my maiden name back; the one that I felt I probably should have kept all along. Was it going to be the date we went to court, the thirty days after when the judge signed off on it, or the four months later that it became final? I needed to know exactly when I could legally be Christine Molloy again. I missed her. Somehow in the process of those nine years, she became a lesser version of herself and now that she was back on the road to discovering herself again, she needed her name back to feel true to that process. On December 27, 2009, in the eyes of the law, she came back. It was about damn time.




In no uncertain circumstances am I against women changing their names when they get married, most women I know have done it. That being said, there is one thing I am certain of in this entire world and that is, I will never ever change my name again. Not because I had a failed marriage, but because I want to go through this life as Christine Molloy, with all of her successes, failures, aspirations, and dreams…and trust me, there is plenty of all of the above!




I would be curious to hear my reader’s opinions about changing their name; the pros, cons, and everything in between. Please feel free to leave your comments below….







Photo Courtesy of Google images
« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2024 For Everything There is a Season

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑