A Letter to the Bride, Myself, 10 Years Ago
Dear Kristin Pavona (2007 addition),
Today is your wedding day! You are about to become Kristin Hundt. This is a day that you have been planning in your mind for as long as you can remember. It's here!
Today, you choose a man, Josh Hundt, to walk along side you as your partner, your equal, your biggest cheerleader, supporter, your knight in shining armor.
As you patiently wait for Grandma Ort to arrive in the post-tornado/curfew traffic that is the thriving metropolis of Williamston, Michigan, you are certainly thinking about your husband, how much you love him today, and all the reasons WHY you feel in love with him.
Now that I've been married to Josh for ten years, which I think gives me the ability to be pretty legit on the subject, let me drop some knowledge...
First of all, you will love Josh more in the years to come than you do right now... like a lot more.
I hope that gives you some peace.
Second, I know that you fell in love with Josh because of how different he was from you. He was everything you were not. Ever since you met him, his care-free attitude, sense of humor, radiant positivity, and his laid-back personality and zest for life made him quite appealing to you.
Josh is not that person.
He is not the ying to your yang, but instead the yang to your yang. He is an anxious worrier JUST.LIKE.YOU.
BAM. Mic drop.
Now before you lose it and question the decision you have made to spend your life with him- don't worry! You will find this out very quickly and it will be quite alright. Different than you thought, yes, but completely okay. The deep and profound way that you will understand each other will be incredibly helpful through crisis, through stress, and through joy as well. Opposites don't have the be the only ones that attract :) You will also be pleasantly surprised at the way one of you always steps up to be the calm, collected, rational thinker when the other one can't. It works, fear not.
As a seasoned married person to Josh Hundt, I want to give you, the almost bride, some extreme reassurance of what you are about to do by asking you to remember what makes Josh and you so special and so unique...
You can admit to yourself that you loved this man, in some form, since you were fourteen years old. For those ten years up until now, your wedding day, Josh has been a huge part of your life- the person you kept going back to again and again and again. When you were in your early teenage years, you chose him. When you were in the weeds of teenage angst, you chose him. When you were deciding what to do with the rest of your life, leaving high school to go on to college, you chose him. When you graduated college, starting adulthood, you chose him.
A lot of changing and growing went on during those stages of your life and both you and him kept coming back to each other. This is the key to what makes Josh and Kristin so special.
That will continue to be one of the best parts of your relationship- as you grow and change, you will still come back to each other, you will still choose each other.
You don't know this yet, but from your wedding day until your ten year anniversary, life is going to get legit real quick and you and him will both grow and change... like a lot. You will endure deaths in the family, cancer in the family, drug addiction in the family. You both will never be the same after that and you will still choose each other.
You will change a tremendous amount again as you maneuver the world of infertility, bad news, countless doctors appointments, countless tests, countless medications, countless pokes and prodding. Romance will die during this time- schedules and timing will be all that matter. Shuffling appointments will run your life. You both will never be the same after that and you will still choose each other.
Josh and you will love two babies, make plans for two babies, dream of two babies, and never hold those two babies. Your grief will be immense and crippling. It will forever change the way you look at pregnancy and add extreme worry and extreme stress and extreme fear to the beautiful baby-carrying experience. You will both never be the same after that and you will still choose each other.
When you hold your babies after full term pregnancies for the first time, you will both sob in gratitude, overcome with a new deep love for other human beings. First smiles and laughs will make you want to explode. Going from crawling to walking will make you smile and cry all at the same time. When you accomplish something you'd waited for, hoped for, prayed for, worked damn hard for, and didn't know would ever happen, your both will never be the same after that and you will still choose each other.
The reality of work, grading papers, catching up on emails, balancing schedules, sleepless nights, potty training, preschool, shuffling people around from one activity to the next, and ALL that comes with parenting and adulting will sometimes make you feel like you are a completely different human. You will barely recognize yourself some days. You will have very little time or energy left to do much of anything else including pumping time into your relationship. You will both never be the same after that and you will still choose each other.
Time will fly. There will be more joy than you imagined and more sorrow than you imagined, but never EVER forget how often you've chosen each other. It is what makes you special, strong, unique and one of the reasons I know you are so sure about what you are about to do.
Your wedding day will be fabulous- soak it all in and take time to enjoy it. And every time that you look at that groom's face throughout the ceremony, the picture taking, the reception, know with all of you heart, you made the absolute right decision.
With so much love,
The ten-year older, hopefully ten-year wiser, Kristin Hundt (2017 addition)
Today is your wedding day! You are about to become Kristin Hundt. This is a day that you have been planning in your mind for as long as you can remember. It's here!
Today, you choose a man, Josh Hundt, to walk along side you as your partner, your equal, your biggest cheerleader, supporter, your knight in shining armor.
As you patiently wait for Grandma Ort to arrive in the post-tornado/curfew traffic that is the thriving metropolis of Williamston, Michigan, you are certainly thinking about your husband, how much you love him today, and all the reasons WHY you feel in love with him.
Now that I've been married to Josh for ten years, which I think gives me the ability to be pretty legit on the subject, let me drop some knowledge...
First of all, you will love Josh more in the years to come than you do right now... like a lot more.
I hope that gives you some peace.
Second, I know that you fell in love with Josh because of how different he was from you. He was everything you were not. Ever since you met him, his care-free attitude, sense of humor, radiant positivity, and his laid-back personality and zest for life made him quite appealing to you.
Josh is not that person.
He is not the ying to your yang, but instead the yang to your yang. He is an anxious worrier JUST.LIKE.YOU.
BAM. Mic drop.
Now before you lose it and question the decision you have made to spend your life with him- don't worry! You will find this out very quickly and it will be quite alright. Different than you thought, yes, but completely okay. The deep and profound way that you will understand each other will be incredibly helpful through crisis, through stress, and through joy as well. Opposites don't have the be the only ones that attract :) You will also be pleasantly surprised at the way one of you always steps up to be the calm, collected, rational thinker when the other one can't. It works, fear not.
As a seasoned married person to Josh Hundt, I want to give you, the almost bride, some extreme reassurance of what you are about to do by asking you to remember what makes Josh and you so special and so unique...
You can admit to yourself that you loved this man, in some form, since you were fourteen years old. For those ten years up until now, your wedding day, Josh has been a huge part of your life- the person you kept going back to again and again and again. When you were in your early teenage years, you chose him. When you were in the weeds of teenage angst, you chose him. When you were deciding what to do with the rest of your life, leaving high school to go on to college, you chose him. When you graduated college, starting adulthood, you chose him.
A lot of changing and growing went on during those stages of your life and both you and him kept coming back to each other. This is the key to what makes Josh and Kristin so special.
That will continue to be one of the best parts of your relationship- as you grow and change, you will still come back to each other, you will still choose each other.
You don't know this yet, but from your wedding day until your ten year anniversary, life is going to get legit real quick and you and him will both grow and change... like a lot. You will endure deaths in the family, cancer in the family, drug addiction in the family. You both will never be the same after that and you will still choose each other.
You will change a tremendous amount again as you maneuver the world of infertility, bad news, countless doctors appointments, countless tests, countless medications, countless pokes and prodding. Romance will die during this time- schedules and timing will be all that matter. Shuffling appointments will run your life. You both will never be the same after that and you will still choose each other.
Josh and you will love two babies, make plans for two babies, dream of two babies, and never hold those two babies. Your grief will be immense and crippling. It will forever change the way you look at pregnancy and add extreme worry and extreme stress and extreme fear to the beautiful baby-carrying experience. You will both never be the same after that and you will still choose each other.
When you hold your babies after full term pregnancies for the first time, you will both sob in gratitude, overcome with a new deep love for other human beings. First smiles and laughs will make you want to explode. Going from crawling to walking will make you smile and cry all at the same time. When you accomplish something you'd waited for, hoped for, prayed for, worked damn hard for, and didn't know would ever happen, your both will never be the same after that and you will still choose each other.
The reality of work, grading papers, catching up on emails, balancing schedules, sleepless nights, potty training, preschool, shuffling people around from one activity to the next, and ALL that comes with parenting and adulting will sometimes make you feel like you are a completely different human. You will barely recognize yourself some days. You will have very little time or energy left to do much of anything else including pumping time into your relationship. You will both never be the same after that and you will still choose each other.
Time will fly. There will be more joy than you imagined and more sorrow than you imagined, but never EVER forget how often you've chosen each other. It is what makes you special, strong, unique and one of the reasons I know you are so sure about what you are about to do.
Your wedding day will be fabulous- soak it all in and take time to enjoy it. And every time that you look at that groom's face throughout the ceremony, the picture taking, the reception, know with all of you heart, you made the absolute right decision.
With so much love,
The ten-year older, hopefully ten-year wiser, Kristin Hundt (2017 addition)
Comments
Post a Comment