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Five Minute Friday: After

Oh the after - I have been kicking and screaming through my after. I know that there are positive things that have come from this after-my-divorce life but I still miss the before. I miss my old life.

I know that in the after I have amazed myself with the things I can do on my own. I can set aside money for a rainy day and still build my TOMS shoes collection. I can do things like back my car into my 45-degree-angle driveway with a hatch so full of mulch that all I saw was bags of bark in the rearview mirror and manage to not hit my house or the neighbor's fence. I was able to carry my 50-pound dog into the emergency vet's office and deal with the news that she was gone. And most importantly, my relationship with God has grown so much deeper in the after than I think it ever would have in the before.

I still struggle with accepting the after. I so often feel like if I look like I'm happy, people will think I'm awful because I'm not curled up in a ball crying myself to sleep at night over the end of my marriage. But I need to accept it - it is my reality. Does it still cut me to my core? Yes. I often feel like just when I get the pieces of my broken heart put back together, something happens that picks me up and shakes me like a snow globe, breaking my heart apart again, the shattered pieces cutting me as they rattle around inside me.

I struggle to remind myself that God has a good plan for me, to prosper me, to give me double for my trouble, to turn to good what others meant for my harm. I struggle to remind myself that even though I have a piece of paper that would to some mean I'm a failure, I am a child of the most high God who still loves me. I may not be a couple anymore but I am definitely not alone and that thought is what gets me through the toughest of days in this after.
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  1. UnknownApril 5, 2013 at 6:01 PM

    Dear Andrea
    I am so sorry you have to endure the pain and heartache of a divorce. I am just so glad that you don't have to face this alone, but that our Lord is your ever present companion.
    Praying for you
    Mia

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