As the time draws near, more and more I start to feel this weird nagging. This faint voice in the background that I can barely hear whispering ever so softly. At first, I brush it off, “It’s nothing”. As the days pass the tiny voice gets a just a hair louder. Still very quiet, very faint. I listen more closely. There is still some muffling, something preventing me from hearing the voice clearly.
Yesterday as I lay in bed preparing for my nightly prayer I hear the voice loud and clear, WIFE. I pause, the voice continues, “In a few weeks you will be laying in a bed, on a resort, far, far away as someones wife….” Suddenly I am overcome with nerves and butterflies.
See as a child I was never the one who spent the night away from home. I didn’t attend overnight camps, trips, I didn’t even spend the night at family members homes. I needed consistency, surroundings that I knew and were familiar with. I needed MY room. I felt secure and safe in MY room knowing that my parents were right down the hall. Feeling 100% sure that nothing would happen to me as long as I was at home and my parents were a few feet away. Was this healthy? I don’t know. I’m sure I missed out on a few opportunities in my teen years because I was unwilling to spend the night away from home.
Just to give you an idea of how serious it was for me. Every year my family, immediate, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc takes a family trip. We pick somewhere on the map and go. This has happened every year since I was born. Knowing every year that this was to come, the night we were set to leave I would get so nervous about being away from home that I would work myself up to the point of making myself sick. Holding up the departure process for at least 30 minutes to an hour. Yeah that was me. I was that child.
Now as an adult I still get this way when it comes to traveling but I know how to deal with it. I know how to subdue the nerves and the butterflies. At least enough not to work myself up into a tizzy. Getting back to the voice. Once the voice finishes it’s statement I realize that I am no longer under my parents care. I will be in my husband’s care. This realization re-awakens the butterflies that were starting to settle down.
My point of comfort has always been my parents. My first plane experience was with my parents at 25 yrs old. My first time out of the U.S. was with my parents around 28. Regardless of where I was going or how nervous I was, as long as they were there I felt a certain underlying sense of comfort. That bond, that comfort, that security is coming to an end. My parents will no longer be my safe haven, they will no longer be where I look for comfort. That position will now be filled by my husband. When I’m nervous, when I’m shaky, when I’m scared I will now be reliant on him to provide the comfort that I got from my parents for the past 32 years.
This terrifies me. Not because I don’t think I will find the comfort with my soon to be husband. It terrifies me because now I realize that this is my final transition. The final string that ties me to my parents, to my father, will be gone. The man who has loved me with all his heart, who has taken phenomenal care of me for my ENTIRE life will be giving me away to the man that will take care of me for the rest of my life.
Major Morris 