Regrets, I've Had A Few......

I'm battling a flu bug and burning the midnight oil. Luckily, I have my loaded DVR to help me pass the time. Tonight's selection? The 2 hr special from 19 Kids & Counting when the first Duggar girl gets married.

I am choked up as I watch this. Conflicted. Sad. Jealous. Regretful. Bittersweet as the story unfolds and the events slowly mirror a day in the life of a wedding professional. In the nine years I have been in the wedding business, I have conducted the rehearsals, herded bridal party members, performed crowd control, and helped settle some of the nervous Nellies that are to be expected on a big day like a wedding.

So what is it that is making me feel this way? It is the chance I never got to share with my father.

I'm watching the patriarch of the Duggar clan have repeat tears filling in his eyes. Watching him choke up. Listening to his children comment about how often he cried. All of it played out before me on the tv screen on my bedroom. I'm bawling my eyes out. The stuffy nose of my cold is now draining like a faucet.

It has been three years since my father took his last breath and left this world. I was lucky to have had my dad until I was 36 years old. Barely 36 but 36 nonetheless. The last 10 years of his life I had a wonderful chance to have a different kind of relationship with him. I practiced the act of living amends which helped me make up, in my mind, for a good portion of the life I lived. I was far from being the daughter I was created to be.

I carry a guilt when I witness weddings. Whether I perform the wedding or am a mere spectator, there are heart strings that are pulled that reach deep in my soul. I never gave my dad the chance that dads are supposed to have in the wedding department. He wouldn't ever get the chance to walk his daughters down an isle, do a father/daughter dance, offer a prayer over the bridal couple, do a speech and a toast, to serenade his princess and the man who would be the keeper of her heart, or to complain about footing the bill for a wedding. He had chances in a sense, however his daughters never extended the invites in those weddings before. (And I say daughters because I was not the only child to have robbed this man of the opportunity.)

Being a mom, I can only hope and pray that I will be given a different legacy.