“Hang on, you two! It’s gonna be a wild ride…”

If you could look back at yourself when you started down the path you are currently on, what would you say?

This was 14 years ago [next month]. I was 23 and just out of college, working retail, with a degree in Art. I had no idea what life would be like down the road.

If I knew back then what it would be like now, it would have scared me to death. You can prepare all your life for the future, but no amount of preparation will prepare you for the unpredictability of life.

I was going through these old photos and reminiscing.

I looked back with fond memories of our wedding day.
Our photographer really captured the best day of our lives, in the best way.

I remember when this photo was taken. This was just after the photographer told all my groomsman to pick me up (and they promptly dropped me in the wet grass, ruining my boutonniere). The photographer got some great shots of that. He was a truly great photographer.

It’s funny. In life, that’s the stuff I remember the most. Not when everything “goes to plan…” the stuff that went awry.

Being unemployed for the first 6 months of our marriage. Our first move… All the complications when Jonny (our oldest) was born in 2008 … cleft palate… bilateral hip dysplasia… the surgeries… the sleepless colicky crying straight through the night, sometimes lasting 10 hours straight.

Parenthood would be more challenging than I ever dreamed.

The stress I felt going back to school in 2012… of getting a new job… of being let go … the day after we found out we were pregnant with Jonah…

…diagnosis day. No amount of preparation will prepare you for that…

Sometimes, life doesn’t turn out the way you planned. Sometimes, life is just hard.

I was curious as I looked at this photo. The photographer’s website is no longer in service. I did a little research to find out why…

It turns out, while we were worried about having a new baby, and the loss of my job and all the future stresses with autism that would come after, our wedding photographer, who perfectly captured the beginning of our journey together, lost his own battle with brain cancer. He was 54.

You can prepare all your life for the future, but no amount of preparation will prepare you for the unpredictability of life.

Original Facebook Post.