Grace in the Happy Ever After...

I dearly wish life were a Hallmark movie, with snow that magically falls without making slush and endings that you can see coming a mile away.

This past weekend I had a most glorious couple of days celebrating this impending 40th birthday with some of my dearest and closest friends. We laughed and ate and (some of us) drank and just completely enjoyed getting to spend time with each other sans children.

(I am beyond grateful to them and their families/babysitters for making that happen, because in my world, I have older girls who were at their father’s house for the whole weekend, and they have younger kids, so this required a lot of time and effort on their part.)

The centerpiece of this weekend was that we had readings done with my friend, Matt Muschott. I have had a reading done by Matt prior to this, back when my divorce was fresh and new and all I really wanted to know was if I was going to live to see the end of that tailspin of grief. His words to me at that time brought such comfort to that panicked girl-they were not a promise that all would be well, but they were a promise of a much greater picture than I could see at the time.

Matt has been blessed with a gift that he graciously shares and I am all the more fortunate for his appearance in my life.

So, this past weekend, we had readings done, and we all agree that they were profound and life affirming.

My personal reading was again in the vein of, what the heck comes next? Because, as I said to him before he began, I am scared. I am scared every single day that I don’t know what I’m doing, that I’m not doing this right.

And again, his words were a comfort, if also a bit of a challenge, a bit of an idea that I can allow myself to dream bigger and bolder than I ever seem to think possible.

But mostly, he told me that my saving grace is my girls. That we are our unit, that I couldn’t ask for better help along this journey. How lucky am I, he said, that they chose me to be their mom?

And so today, I was looking back over some old writing that I had done for the blog but never seemed to find its way to the actual print, and I found this:

“Things are so much better now.”

These are actual words from my Betsy. The question to her was, “Do you miss the way that our family used to be?”

I can’t quite explain how this child always knows just the right way to say something to her somewhat wayward mother.

I wrote that in March. I remember the conversation. Betsy said, “Things are so much better now,” and then she proceeded to talk about how much I have changed. And it’s true.

I worry to an absurd degree that the girls will end up like kids on an after school special. I definitely know people who have struggled when a parent left. But, at least for us, so far, we are changed in ways that has strengthened us as a family, that has turned on its head the idea that somehow living in separate homes was not the ideal for our kids.

I certainly understand that the absolute ideal in this world would be for my kids to have parents who live together and love each other. But our reality, which has been hard fought for, is something that, honestly, I am proud of.

Things are so much better now.

Indeed, Miss Betsy Anne, they are.

I still don't know the ending, I still don't live in the magical snow globe of a Hallmark movie, but I'm trying (so hard) to make peace with the idea that our happy ever after still exists, in a completely different form than we imagined 18 years ago.