Sibling's wedding - The Joy and Sorrow of it all!!!!

There he is. Standing at the beautifully decorated altar. He’s got his suit on, hair done for once, the few selected guests are standing, he's ensuring all the details are in order and he stares back at the church doors as his gorgeous bride begins to walk down the aisle. Some beautiful messages are shared, vows spoken, tears of mixed emotions shed by many of our family and friends watching live-stream from around the world due to COVID times, and just like that, my one and only brother is married.

My only brother's recent wedding on 10.10.2020 had me feeling railroaded with a ton of emotional mixed feelings. For one, it was my brother’s wedding day, everyone was so elated. And second, our immediate family, including myself, my parents or my sister-in-laws parents could NOT attend the wedding in person, due to COVID restrictions.

In all honesty, it was the family event of the decade we've all been waiting for. In truth, pre-COVID, the wedding was originally set to happen 5 years ago. But at that time, my brother and sister-in-law decided they needed more time. And much to the large traditional family's disappointment, the church wedding was cancelled. In truth, I'm glad they took the time they needed only to having realized now that they are better off with each other, rather than without.

However given that they were still husband and wife legally, my brother and sister-in-law worked at their relationship/ marriage and let me tell you, it was not easy for either of them. And I couldn't be more proud of both of them for being so vulnerable enough to admit it openly.

Because in truth, marriage is not easy. There are few things in society we’ve imbued with quite as much expectation and meaning as marriage.

We grow up thinking the hardest part will be finding the “right” person, who we assume will be the key to a happy life. The more right a person is for us, we think, the less suffering we will experience.

And, generally, people do pair up with other people they believe they’ll be happiest with (even if, in some cases, that happiness is more about security, status, or tradition than love). But sometimes, people choose who they think they’ll be happiest with only to find out they are incorrect. This isn’t because they’ve committed to the “wrong” person. It’s because their expectations were an ideal, not a reality. These unrealistic expectations can wreck you if you let them.

The work of marriage is not about whether you find and keep your most ideal counterpart. Marriage is about what you do when you discover you can be with the most perfect person for you—and still find yourself frustrated, exhausted, dragged down, and at your wit’s end. It takes love, trust, respect but above all, a choice to be with each other.

The magic of marriage is that it’s not meant to make you feel happy in that dopamine-laced, movie-ending kind of way. It’s meant to make you aware of yourself, and the more deeply you can grow, the more joy you will experience.

It’s counterintuitive, but the less you expect marriage to make you happy, the more it will.

And to be honest, over the course of these last 5 years, my brother admitted to me that if it wasn't for my sister-in law, he didn't think he could ever be with anyone else in marriage. Being his older sister, I couldn't have been more proud of him than I was at that moment, knowing and realising how hard it must have been for him to admit what he just admitted to me.

Maybe my real-life love story made a considerable impact on one too many couples, including my brother and sister-in-law to know that it was always best to stick with your partner.

Fast forward to 2020, when they finally decided to walk down the aisle in July this year, COVID hit and everything got cancelled yet again. Our immediate family, including me, had to cancel all our pre-planned trips to London. Like everything wedding-related, the decision to go forth with nuptials amidst a pandemic has created drama between friends, family, and other brides on social media. The botched government response to COVID-19, at the federal and state levels, means that while the world is setting records for new daily cases, couples are left to parse confusing information — are masks mandatory or suggested? Are wedding venues considered restaurants? Do out-of-state guests need to quarantine? — and weigh their own personal interests against a shared responsibility to stop the spread. And it’s no surprise that a lot of those decisions are rooted in emotion rather than science.

At one time, my sister-in-law and I joked that 'maybe, this was God's sign to not move forward with the wedding.' But in reality, I think this was God's perfect plan all along - to reiterate to the world and to us, as a family, that we DO NOT need to throw a big wedding celebration to celebrate a couple to be joined in marriage union with Him. He is Enough.

My grace is sufficient for you (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Having come to that realisation, I couldn't have been more happier to know that my brother had the most perfect wedding that day. Anyway, the wedding went well. Family from the US, Europe, India, Dubai and Australia all witnessed my brother's wedding over live stream video that day. I don't think as a family, we could have wished for a better audience. An altar adorned with the most perfect white flowers, the most perfect sermon befitting for the couple, coupled with a serene holy atmosphere of peace and beauty was the epitome of the wedding that day.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Here’s the thing, I love my brother very much and quite the contrary, I dont tell him that quite often; I guess I feel we just know that we love each other by default and would be there for each other, regardless of circumstances, at least for a large part of our lives on this earth. And I’m so completely open about that fact.

But what about how your relationships changes or would change with your sibling as each of you grow up and go through each of your different stages of life at different times? The one thing I've come to realize is that the family dynamics changes. It's nothing like parents' relationship with their children; the dynamics of the sibling relationship is completely different.

I know that when my brother and sister-in-law had a court wedding 5 years ago, it changed our family quite a bit. Not because they got married at court but because our family was traditional and really wished for them to be married the old-fashioned way back then i.e. at church, have a grand receptions and so on, the fact that they got married in the most unconventional manner was somewhat hard to relate to. And just maybe, had they done it the old -fashioned way, we could have resonated with the feeling much quicker that he's ACTUALLY married. With circumstances the way they were, it honestly took me a while to get used to the fact that my little brother was now, a husband too.

Either ways, when your sibling gets married, it changes your family dynamic and your whole future because a new person is added to your family, a sister is added and now you no longer have just a brother, but you have a sister too!

To an only girl who never had any direct sisters, this was like heaven whenever I found out I would be getting a new sister in the family. Yes, I’m sure you can imagine there are all sorts of emotions and mixed feelings about how your family dynamic will be changing and how your relationship with your brother will begin to change as he enters into a new chapter of his life. But even with all the changes coming and the many emotions, that’s only temporary because as you get to know your sister-in-law better each year, you realize that having her join your family is one of the bests gifts God could have ever given you!

It’s no secret that I share a lot about how much I love my family and brother and the impact they have had on my whole life, but here’s the thing. I love my sister-in-law too! And here’s another thing, she really isn't just my sister-in-law, she feels like a sister to me and there are so many wonderful things you get to experience with a sister as soon as your brother says those two magic words: I do!

Over time, as I've gotten to know my sister-in-law, in many ways I realized she and I are similar and yet in many ways we're not. And I guess that's a good thing. In hindsight, given how my brother is the person he is today and the fact that how his and my relationship has changed over the past so many years, I realized he's better off having someone like my sister-in-law in his life, rather than having a character carbon copy of me or my mom.

I’m not going to lie to you. It’s a REALLY big change. And yet the biggest blessing.

Yes, it is completely normal to feel unsure and hesitant about how this might change my family dynamic or how my relationship with my brother may begin to change, but that doesn’t mean the change is going to be negative. It’s just going to be different. It’s going to take some getting used to. It’s going to take some level setting of expectations. And it’s going to take some time. But as soon as we embrace that our family is changing and manage the expectations for holidays, family get togethers, and other things, that is when we can start to fully take in everything we have just gained in our life. A sister. A daughter.

That’s what we have to look forward to! We both will be different and maybe we won’t even have a ton in common, but that doesn’t mean she can’t be one of the biggest blessings to our family!

Welcome to the family V!!

#siblingwedding

#open-life

#BetterTogether

#IDoCrew

#JinwinJosey

#VeenaZacharias