One Is Just A Number

It is ironic that the prompt for today is remember when I almost forgot to do a post. Luckily, I have 8 minutes left in the day. I've been trying to remember why I wanted to do a blog. I know that one of the main reasons was after my divorce, I only found one blog that talked about divorce from a Christian perspective. Also, most Christian blogs were written by happily married women who used endearing terms like "the hubs" and "the littles." I wanted spiritual nourishment from someone I could relate to instead of someone who had everything I dreamed of having. I thought, if I felt like that, there had to be other women out there like me who need to know that God still loved them and had a good plan for their life despite their heartbreak. As I type this I remembered that another thought I had for this blog was to help others like me who wanted to cook good meals for one without getting tired of leftovers or wasting ingredients when trying to cut recipe...

If I look closely, I can still see the imprint of my engagement and wedding rings on my left hand, even though I took them off 10 years ago today. X and I went out to dinner to mark our anniversary and after we got home, he suggested that maybe after four months of being separated that it was time to take our rings off.  The rings we had placed on each other's hands 14 years earlier in front of everyone we knew  as we vowed to be together forever. We had so many plans that day and here we were, making plans to start living separate lives. As I was looking through my computer files at work today, I came across the graphic above that I downloaded from Facebook. It reminded me of this pin that I've had for years, years before I started making plans with X.  I shook my head as I thought about how many years I've spent trying to achieve the goal of abandoning my plans for what's waiting for me. Have I missed something great because I stubborn...

When I started this blog, my intent was to offer myself to the readers, to guide them through a difficult time of their life, specifically a divorce like I was experiencing. I haven't always done the best job finding my voice. Now this blog seems more of a cautionary tale as to how NOT to go through recovery. I feel as though I have taken steps to move forward but I have also taken my fair share of steps back. Some would say my progress has taken far too long. But here is the thing, no one can tell you how fast you are going to recover from something. Every situation is different, every hurt is different, every heart is different. Especially when it is something like a divorce - every story is different. So if you are reading this today, know that there is no wrong way to go through something difficult. There is only one way - your way. Please do not let anyone offer you the wrong advice and tell you that you should be over it by now. Your heart will know when it is right to ...

This photo was taken in a London hotel room two years ago. My sister and I had dropped our stuff off and we're getting ready to see the sights of a city I had dreamed about for so long. Ready to start the three-week adventure of our trip to Europe. The hard airplane ride across an ocean was behind us and we were ready to hit the ground running, jet lag be damned. We were going to make the most of our time there. That's what I feel like today. I am ready to take on life. The hard part of mourning the end of my marriage (mostly) behind me, I am ready to hit the ground running and make the most of my time on earth. Ready to take on the home improvement projects, ready to spend another year as co-chair of a committee at church, ready to go to work each day and do my job, as well as perhaps another one, depending on how the early-retirement packages shake out. I am ready. Yesterday my Facebook status was the "One of life's hardest lessons is realizing that the thing t...

Five Minute Friday is a writing event that has writers spending five minutes writing on the same topic and then sharing them at http://katemotaung.com/five-minute-friday/ . This week's word is Trust. Trust is the perfect word for this Friday. Today would have been my 22nd wedding anniversary. So many days it has taken everything I have to trust that my marriage ending would not be the end of me. So many days I have looked at Jeremiah 29:11 and strived to believe that God has a good plan for me. Trust is so hard. You would think it would be the opposite. Why isn't trust easy? We fight so hard to figure it all out, to find the answers, when trusting would be so much easier. Trust is so much easier when it comes to everything in our lives. Why don't we trust that God is carrying us? Why do our brains insist on figuring it out? I sat in a Starbucks today writing in a Moleskin journal (is it just me or do things seem more profound when written in a Moleskin?) and the ...

I did something that terrified me on Sunday - I spoke in front of my church. It wasn't a huge number of people, approximately 100, but that is more than I've talked to at once. Ever. I gave a testimony of sorts about how I feel about my church. Several weeks ago, I wrote this post from Lisa-Jo's prompt worship . Once I was done with it, I sent it to my pastor to let him know what the church meant to me. He asked me if I'd be willing to speak these words at the beginning of the service, as part of events gearing up to Pledge Sunday. This was huge for me for several reasons. Like I said, it was something that terrified me, which I am not prone to do. I shrink away from things that scare me but this time, I answered in the affirmative and hit reply to my pastor's email before I could chicken out. Second, it got me out of the shadows and moving towards being a more active member of my church. In the eight months I've been a member there, I've most...

I am a little disappointed in myself for the lack of posts on my blog. Lately I’ve only managed my Five Minute Friday posts. The main reason for this is lately I haven’t believed that “one is just a number.” I don’t feel qualified to tell other people how to move forward with their life because I’ve been spending so much time in the past. Last Tuesday I had lunch with X. What I thought was going to be a get together centered around hearing about his new job and his recent trip to New Orleans turned into a post mortem on our marriage and details about his current life that I really didn’t want to hear. I needed to hear them but I didn’t want to. And the funny thing is, I thanked him at the end of the lunch, knowing that what he had told me was what I needed to hear to move forward. But as I’m wont to do, I focused on the downside and wallowed in the fact that I heard things that I didn’t want to hear and it evolved into a pity party that lasted for days on ...