10 Things No One Tells You About Getting Engaged

Getting engaged is awesome, amazing, and wonderful when it's you and the person of your dreams focusing on spending the rest of your lives together.  Then there are the things that no one warns you about.  For those of you not engaged yet, WARNING:

1.  Prepare the date you are going to get married before you actually agree to get married.  I recommend this because if you tell someone 30 seconds after you got engaged that you got engaged, they will want to know when the wedding is, what your colors are, and whether there will be an open bar.

2.  For serial "yes" sayers like me, being engaged will either smother you into panic or teach you the "n" word.  Everyone wants to help, and that's awesome, but there are some moments that are going to be personal for me and I only want certain people involved.  Back off - because I don't want to feel guilty for not inviting you.  If you want to help, start a wedding fund or something.

3.  Everyone wants to know when you will start having children.  Hey, how about I get married first?  Also, I'm sorry, but did you just ask me when I am going to have sex?  Tomorrow, or never, mind your own business.

4.  Every conversation starts about being engaged, and this can get awkward.  I went to buy paper at a local office supply store that I have gone to for years.  The gal at the counter squealed when she saw my ring, asked about my fiancé, asked how it happened, asked about the wedding…blah blah blah.  Then she asked what I was getting and what I needed it for.  "I need nice paper to print programs for my mom's funeral."  "Oh my God I'm so sorry."  Mmmhmm.  Anything else you'd like to know about my life?

5.  If you are wearing an engagement ring, be prepared to be dragged around like your arm is a leash for a few weeks.  Seriously.  Do some shoulder work outs to be able to keep it raised for awhile because your hand no longer belongs to you.

6.  Get business cards with your engagement story printed on them.  This way, your story stays special and you remember the details.  After repeating it 500,000 times, it loses the glitz and glamour it had the first time you heard yourself say it.  For me, my engagement story is sweet, romantic, and really defines my fiancé and my relationship and I want to keep that special.  No - I am not really getting business cards printed, but I think it's okay to keep the memories between you and the people who matter.

7.  No matter how far off your wedding is, it feels like everything needs to be planned right now.  Advertisements on our clever computers, incessant questioning about what we are going to do, and my Type A personality make me want to get everything lined up and finished - even though my wedding is not for two and half years.

8.  Saying the "f" word for the first time is weird.  Not that "f" word.  Fiancé.  It took me a few days to even say it.  It's still sinking in.

9.  People treat you differently.  It's as if you have become an adult through this magical ring on your finger.  I'm still ME people!  I'm still immature and crazy!  I may know who I want to be with for the rest of my life but I did yesterday, too, otherwise I wouldn't have said yes.  Did you just not believe me before?

10.  Being engaged can be a stage in an of itself.  Dating then marriage doesn't have to be the way it is. I am still working on this (as I have only been engaged two weeks…) but why can't we slow down and just enjoy being engaged without worrying about a wedding and being married and having children?  I want to appreciate the fact that someone loves me enough to want to spend the rest of his life with me without jumping to that result.  I want to have fun being engaged and staying in love.  Sure, engagement is a transitional phase, but what's the rush?

Eulogy for My Mom

Dear God,

I wrote you once before about my Dad, about how I just wasn’t ready to let him go and how I just didn’t understand what had happened.  I’ve changed a lot in the last five years, God, and though I have no more answers, I have more peace.  Instead of begging you for more time or more understanding, I’d like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to know my mom in a truly unique way. 

I would like to share this with you. 

I want to explain how much I know that she is a survivor.  That sounds strange here, now, without her standing next to me, but she is a survivor in ways I think few people can claim to be. 

My mom grew up the only girl with four brothers.  Perhaps, Lord, this is where and how she learned to be such a survivor.  Because not only did you give her four brothers, you gave her four brothers in a navy family and put her smack dab in the middle.  And not only that, but these brothers are all complete opposites – and you gave her the skills and patience and understanding to love AND LIKE each one of them. And you made her strong enough to be a person each one of them could love in return.

Being in this navy family, she learned how survive meeting new people and having to leave them behind.  She survived and learned to keep looking forward to the next stage of life – the next adventure – not necessarily because she wanted to but because that is what she did, as a survivor.  You take what you are given and you move forward.  You move forward in whatever way you can until you convince yourself that that is what you wanted and that you are happy.  And then you are happy – because you survived the rough parts. 

And perhaps it is this survival instinct that taught her to never quit something you start and never give up on something you believe in. Through these characteristics I saw my mom agonize over things that she believed in.  I saw my mom pour her heart and soul into people, places, and things that she never wanted to give up on.  I saw her blind faith change lives and I saw it hurt her own life for the sake of others. Through this, Lord, my mom taught me balance.  How to survive and give of yourself all at once. 

Perhaps her final lesson was having to learn to survive through trusting other people.  She never had to doubt the accuracy of her mind – numbers, emotions, intuitions, advice giving, were always right on the money.  When the cancer started to take hold, she became scared and skeptical and sad.  To make it through each day she had to trust that she would be taken care of – that even though her own mind was not giving her the right answers, someone else might be able to give her those answers. 

When she had to do this, she really showed how much of a survivor she was because I am not sure she ever learned this lesson.  The lesson that came through to me was that she trusted herself and believed in herself and her own abilities above all else.  Even though this made it difficult sometimes to deal with her, it was incredible to see her push through every single limitation anyone tried to put on her. 

Before I’m done, Lord, I also want to tell her how sorry I am that I couldn’t fix her when the cancer took over.  I want to tell her how sorry I am that I wasn’t always patient with her trusting herself instead of trusting in me.  I want my mom to know that the reason I got so frustrated was because she taught me to trust myself in the same way she trusted herself.  I’m so sorry that I didn’t repay those skills to her when she needed me to.  I’m sorry that I didn’t show her that I trusted in her at the end.  I wanted to believe that her physical body still held the mom that I could debate with, laugh with, and trust with my own problems.  I still wanted my mom there, because as I saw her body there, I expected so much of that body.  When her body couldn’t live up to her spirit, my spirit did not live up to her own surviving faith in herself.   

Though she is not standing next to me now, I still call my mom a survivor because she survived losing hope of recovery – and Lord I know she survives still, with you.  I knew the moment she took her last breath that she became more alive than she had been in months – because I felt her strong spirit, unencumbered by a fragile body, finally at peace.  And because I knew her spirit survived and was at peace, she showed me once again that surviving isn’t just about the moment you think is the end, it’s about what you do after it’s all over.  Survival is about losing hope then remembering there is still something good.  Feeling my mom’s spirit surviving brings me peace because finally, she is with my dad – two souls that I now know are meant to survive together. Lord, I may be sad sometimes, but it is no longer sadness for my mom.  When I am sad, it is selfish sadness because I miss her being here next to me, in person.  Lord, I pray that you teach me to trust in her survival enough to know that she is always here with me – holding me and pushing me to survive as well as she does.

I can feel her surviving, God, and perhaps she is with you, now because you needed a survivor among your ranks.  She still survives here on earth, though, because she left so much of herself in every person she met, every person who loved her, and every person who will ever hear her story.  She survives as a part of each of us – in every decision we make to not give up, to keep fighting either for ourselves or for someone else.  Every time we decide to keep moving forward in our lives it will be because she gives us the strength to find the strength within ourselves.

I miss my mom, God, but I know that I, too, will survive, because she wouldn’t have it any other way.

Amen.