I love that my daughter is married. Im thrilled that she has a great husband and awesome in-laws. Alyssa and Sam are doing their life their way and I am one of their biggest cheerleaders. God help anyone who would criticize or cause drama; not that anyone would, I’m just saying… Alyssa is 22 years old and Sam is 23. They both have college educations and the college degrees they both worked so very hard for. I never thought I’d say this but I have a bit of envy towards them.
After a 2 year engagement to Tommy I found out I was pregnant with Thomas exactly the week before we were to be married. Thomas wasn’t exactly planned but he was far from prevented. In starting our family so early in our marriage we weren’t able to travel and do many things young marrieds do before they start a family. After Thomas, along came Alyssa…2 moves, Lelly…and the rest is as they say history. I don’t regret having our children as young as we did. Right now it’s great because everyone is old enough to be left alone so that Tommy and I can go to dinner or just take off and be crazy and go to CVS. If we want to go away for the weekend there aren’t any major hoops to jump through. I was able to enter the workforce *and* go back to school for an advanced degree. I couldn’t do those things when everyone was younger and Thomas is a category all his own. There wasn’t much we could do for just the two of us back then. I remember on a Friday or Saturday night we would order dinner for the two of us, wait for everyone to go to bed and then eat by ourselves without interruption. It was nice and I love those memories.
I guess you could say the grass is always greener on the other side; of everything. Even marriage. In writing this out and seeing things retrospectively we lived our life they way God intended us to. I can’t imagine being an older parent and trying to keep up with my kids, especially Thomas. In actuality Thomas made me be “a grown up”. I’ve said it many times and I’ll say it again; I would not be who I am if Thomas were not special needs, but that’s a whole other blog post.
My wish is for Sam and Alyssa to have as clear of a path to their lives together as possible. I know the Lord leads their footsteps and I will be there cheering them on.
Menay O; mom to 4, Christian and thrift shopper on the side... 