FOHNER FAMILY: More Family on Video & the Post About the Wedding...FINALLY

The videos keep coming...

Brad Benson (the first person interviewed) is my step-uncle...my new stepdad's brother (sorry if that is at all confusing...divorce unfortunately complicates families). But this is a good complication...

My stepdad, Todd, is a great guy...he truly LOVES my mom & REALLY cares for her.

Watching a parent get married can let loose a TON of emotions...

Di was chatting with me a few hours before the ceremony while David Hartcorn was taking pics of my mom & Todd. Di, seeing my nerves start to get the best of me, kindly asked how I was feeling about the day & I automatically burst into tears. I instantaneously felt awful that she was thinking she made me cry (Di, it was NOTHING you said...honestly!). It also didn't help that everything was complicated by a surge of hormones from my monthly friend or that I was hours away from giving my toast and already hours into my Matron of Honor duties & desperately trying in vain to heap any stress that my mom was feeling onto myself so that she could enjoy herself.

I was & had been a wreck all weekend. I had taken a Personal Day the day before the wedding so that I could come down to SP a few days early to help make up for the fact that I lived over an hour away from my mom & missed out on helping her prepare for everything that a wedding entails (all you married folks know what I'm talking about...SO much planning & effort goes into the few hours that a ceremony and reception last [& it can be EXTREMELY stressful]).

Mine & Thew's wedding was thankfully so fun to plan & we were so sick in love and anxiously excited for all that marriage would bring for us that the time flew by (of course, the time from when Thew asked me to be his bride to when we said "I do" was only 4 months) and before we knew it, we were in the car on the way to our hotel from the reception with the wind whipping through our hair and trying to not get nervous for what lie ahead (again, all you who waited for your wedding night know EXACTLY what I'm talking about). I have never acted like an awkward child in my life more than I did in that car...it's comical thinking back about it, but at the time the elephant-in-the-room-thing had never been more real & things had never been/have been more awkward between us since then. If someone had been videotaping us, it would have been hilarious.

I digress...so I'm standing there watching this place...

...and suddenly the emotion of the day gets me. A flood of memories rises to the surface of my strong, held-together exterior (at least, I'd like to think I'm strong) & I can't stop the tidal wave of tears that are brimming in my eyes.

This is my mother, who nourished me & ever so gently took every precaution necessary to make sure that as I grew in her belly, I would be safe, so that she & my father wouldn't lose me like they did their first child only months before.

This is my mother, who has lost countless hours of sleep so that I would be fed, held, changed, & sung back to sleep to grow up cared for.

This is my mother, who scooped me up, kissed the bangs, bruises, cuts, dislocated & broken bones, and stitches & held me until my tears stopped flowing after the many falls I have taken.

This is my mother, who when my family was almost killed in a car accident when I was little, braved the pain & fought through her body's will to remain unconscious so that she could carry my screaming baby brother from his car seat to the ambulance that was waiting for him & her...on a broken ankle, no less, that would leave her on crutches for weeks & my dad in bed while my grandparents took care of us since my parents were so injured.

This is my mother, who patiently waited while the ungrateful teenager that I was cursed, kicked, & fought tooth-and-nail to break every single rule that she & my father had put into place for my protection.

This is my mother, who stopped everything to rock me to sleep in high school when the guy I had been dating for over a year broke my heart for the last time while my tears dried on her and graciously forgave me without hesitation for all the unmentionable things I had done/said in the months previous to her & my dad.

This is my mother, who with my dad, spent innumerable hours in the car to watch almost every single game I have ever played in my athletic career...who proudly walked out onto fields & courts to smile for pictures with me at half times of all my senior games for field hockey, basketball, & lacrosse.

This is my mother, who leading up to my own wedding, patiently waited for my anger to subside after she asked me if I was sure I wanted to get married only months after turning 22, knowing all the challenges that being married right after college brings firsthand...even when you are getting married to the person you know without a doubt will be the only one for you, ever.

Only 28 years before, almost to the day, she had been getting married to my father...making the same vows I would make, not knowing that decades later she would sign her name on documents that would end that vow.

Divorce, to put it mildly, SUCKS (& I HATE using that word), but it does. But again, it happens & is even necessary and Biblical in cases like what happened to my parents...but that's not why I'm writing this post...

Wow, I'm REALLY digressing today, aren't I?

I'm writing this post because, Mom, though I will never know everything you've done for me, even when I am a mom myself, I'm so THANKFUL...utterly & continually THANKFUL that you, above all things, were BRAVE ENOUGH to have the conversations with me that few dared to because you loved me more than just to stand by & watch me enter into something that would take more effort than I ever imagined...indescribibly rewarding effort, though :)

To CHALLENGE ME to think...

...to SUPPORT ME NO MATTER WHAT...

...to BELIEVE IN ME when I was blinded by doubt...

...to (no matter what I thought at the time) KNOW WHAT WAS BEST...

...I am THANKFUL...

And on today, the 4th Anniversary of this day...