{"id":4120,"date":"2015-06-15T09:54:41","date_gmt":"2015-06-15T14:54:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rebeccafrech\/?p=4120"},"modified":"2015-06-15T11:00:30","modified_gmt":"2015-06-15T16:00:30","slug":"19-years-later-if-i-could-do-it-over-again-i-wouldnt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rebeccafrech\/2015\/06\/19-years-later-if-i-could-do-it-over-again-i-wouldnt.html","title":{"rendered":"19 Years Later – If I Could Do It Over Again…I Wouldn’t"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

This morning as I lay in bed watching my husband sleep, I thought back over the past 19 years of marriage and knew that If I could do it all over again, I\u2019d do it differently.<\/p>\n

I wouldn\u2019t have married him 19 years ago today at all. I wouldn\u2019t have walked down the aisle on a rainy, gray June day and joined my life to his. I wouldn\u2019t have faced down the family and friends who told us we were too young. I wouldn\u2019t have been a 4-months-pregnant bride.<\/p>\n

If you could just give me a time machine, I\u2019d go back and put a stop to the whole stinking mess.<\/p>\n

\"us022\"<\/a>
If I could do it over, this picture would have never happened.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I\u2019d have never sat crying in the church when the wrong flowers were delivered. My father-in-law wouldn\u2019t have sat sobbing in his pew as his son \u201cthrew his life away.\u201d* We would never have stressed over how to pay for that modest but still way-beyond-our-means wedding. We just wouldn\u2019t have.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Because if I could hop into a Way-Back machine and change things around, we\u2019d have already been married for years.<\/p>\n

I should have married him sooner. It was foolish of us to wait. We certainly didn\u2019t gain anything by not doing it years before we did. We were just as poor, just as naive, just as unprepared at 21 and 23 as we had been at 19 and 21.<\/p>\n

That two year wait gained us nothing except the hidden shame of being a pregnant bride.<\/p>\n

We had listened to our parents who told us that the wise thing to do was to wait. We were too young, they told us, to be ready for such a commitment. (Never mind that our own parents had married just as young as we were then.) We had moved in together, and bought a house, and our parents appeared to agree that this was better than getting married young. We were encouraged that playing house was somehow wiser than beginning a life together. Whether or not that message was what they meant, it was the one we heard.<\/p>\n

Our parents were wrong and we never should have listened to them.<\/p>\n

Laying in bed this morning and watching the steady rise and fall of his breathing, I kept wondering how different our start in life would have been if we hadn\u2019t listened and had just gotten married instead of waiting for our families to approve \u2013 if we had known back then that our certainty was enough. If our first wedding had been more like our second.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

We were officially married in the Catholic Church on our 10th anniversary. It was quiet and low-key. Just our closest family and friends attended the daily Mass where we renewed our vows. The reception at our house featured a pot-luck dinner and a homemade cake. There was no drama or worries over invitations or seating charts. It was just us and our loved ones coming together to ask for God\u2019s blessings on our family. It was joy and grace and all of the lightness of spirit that I wish my first wedding had had. It\u2019s the kind of wedding I hope my children will have, whether it\u2019s big and grand or small and private. I hope that they have that same lack of family drama, and the same certainty.<\/p>\n

My husband and I have walked through Hell and back again in the past 22 years together. We have had 8 children and buried one. We\u2019ve faced sickness, and\u00a0 seen our middle child become a paraplegic and learn to thrive in her new life. We\u2019ve left our families behind and had to start our lives over again in a new city far from home. We\u2019ve lived through poverty and plenty. We\u2019ve seen our first child move out and begin living life on her own.<\/p>\n

As we\u2019ve walked down this long and winding road together, I can\u2019t see that we gained anything by waiting. I remember the stress of living with a man and knowing that \u201cbreaking-up\u201d would have left me both heartbroken and homeless. I remember the arguments of \u201ctoo young\u201d and \u201cnot ready\u201d that seemed so wrong, and yet were the wisdom of common convention and so we listened to them. I remember the trembling hands and fear of holding a positive pregnancy test four months before our wedding date. There is a world of difference between the \u201coh sh*t\u201d of being a pregnant girlfriend, and the joy of being a pregnant wife \u2013 and the ring on my finger was<\/em> the difference.<\/p>\n

Which is why when my children talk about getting married \u201csome day\u201d in the distant future, I tell them to find the right person and then not wait. Don\u2019t wait for their families to approve, or their bank accounts to reach a certain number, or for a college diploma to hang on the wall. When you find the person you know you want to spend the rest of your life with, I ask them, why would you want to wait to get started on the rest of your life?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

*They love me now, so it\u2019s all good.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t miss anything from Shoved to Them, \u201cLike\u201d the Facebook page.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This morning as I lay in bed watching my husband sleep, I thought back over the past 19 years of marriage and knew that If I could do it all over again, I\u2019d do it differently. I wouldn\u2019t have married him 19 years ago today at all. I wouldn\u2019t have walked down the aisle on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1979,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4,45,5,42,8,50,25,21],"class_list":["post-4120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-catholic","tag-common-sense","tag-faith","tag-family","tag-life-lessons","tag-the-computer-guy","tag-thinking","tag-truth"],"yoast_head":"\n19 Years Later - If I Could Do It Over Again...I Wouldn't<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This morning as I lay in bed watching my husband sleep, I thought back over the past 19 years of marriage and knew that If I could do it all over again,\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rebeccafrech\/2015\/06\/19-years-later-if-i-could-do-it-over-again-i-wouldnt.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"19 Years Later - 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