A walk down the aisle...

On July 19, 2003 (10 years ago!) I walked down the aisle to be married to Joe.  The walking part was pretty significant.   The summer after my senior year in high school (1997), I was diagnosed with Muscular Dystrophy.  A degenerative muscle disease, that, in many ways, was (is) still a big mystery to my doctors.  My prognosis was very vague.  The doctors told me that I may walk for several (5, 10, 15, 20) more years, but maybe less.  I have a relatively slow progressing disease, so it was really hard to tell.  How's that for ambiguity?  Anyway, at some point in college (probably as I began to see friends pair off and start planning weddings), I realized that I didn't know if I'd ever walk down the aisle at my own wedding, which suddenly became important to me.  Sometimes my friends would come up with alternative modes of transportation down the aisle, which they all found very humorous.  "Maybe you could ride a horse down the aisle".  "I'll get you a wheelchair and we'll push you down as fast as we can.  Won't that be fun?"  I think there was even mention of a motorcycle with a side car.  Sometimes we had to joke around a little, because the reality of it all was just a little sad.

Fast forward a few years.  Joe and I were getting married and I was still walking!  I was thrilled, but totally freaked out that I would trip and fall in front of all those people.  We had several contingency plans in place, one of which was that Bobby (my lifelong friend and usher at our wedding) would run in, pick me up, throw me over his shoulder, and get me up to the alter!  My dad and Joe also had plans in case I didn't make it up the few steps to the stage, and at several other points throughout the ceremony.  Thankfully, we didn't have to employ any of these plans and I made it down and back up the aisle without any issues!  Slowly and carefully, but none the less successfully!

(some of my emergency back-up plan conspirators!)

I look back at that day and am so glad there isn't an ugly wheelchair in my wedding pictures, but the reality of my life is that it wasn't all that many years later when I would need to rely on that wheelchair more and more and now almost exclusively.  And, as I look back on Joe and I's life together so far, I realize that it wouldn't have mattered if I could walk down the aisle or not.  Heck, Joe probably would have carried me himself down the aisle if I had needed it.  He has certainly carried me many times since then.  And that's the point.  It wasn't so much about that day and whether or not I could make it down the aisle, it's really so much more about the guy who met me at the end of that aisle, who wanted to do life with me, regardless of the circumstances.  

I am blessed to have had Joe as my husband these past 10 years, through all of the great trials and the incredible joys.  I am truly grateful for the gift he has been to me.  Here's to another decade together babe!!