Grace in the Pivot

I thought this blogging thing was going to be a breeze! The first two posts were about business and background. That's easy for me to talk about. What we’re about to get into now, is pretty personal. I don't really know how much I want to share with y'all for real; since we’re just getting to know each other. 

As I mentioned in the very first post, I was once married and now divorced. As a result, I’m a single parent. I’m grateful that I am in a better emotional space now. So yeah, that’s basically the gist of it.

Eye roll…I guess you want more details. Ok…. 

I will say this, neither did I desire nor expect to get married to end up divorced. I definitely thought that I had made a great decision selecting a spouse. What I learned is that my decision making skills weren’t as developed as I may have thought they were. I needed to engage in wise earthly and divine heavenly counsel before making such an important decision, waited for an answer and then acted. I wanted what I wanted but it didn't work out. 

Separation and divorce are two different experiences. Early into the separation, I was open to reconciliation. Mainly because I needed all the years together to make sense. How in the world could I let a 15 year relationship and 11 year marriage go down the drain? Secondarily, I was emotionally vested which made it hard to commit to moving on permanently. I went through every grieving emotion during this time: sadness, anger, disappointment, even shame. All of them!! I need you to know that all of this happened in the midst of the pandemic. 🥴😩

Separation revealed how involved in my life he was but how uninvolved in his life I was. Meaning, anyone who knew me, knew him; however not everyone who knew him knew me, including his family. Now you’d probably say, and girl that wasn’t a sign for you? Not at all; because it wasn’t like we never went around his family, just not as much as we were around my family. Note this, both our families are gathering families. His family didn’t gather when we were together or so I was aware of. The times they did gather, we just didn’t frequently participate. As a result, there were no ties to his family that needed to be broken as it related to me and the members of his immediate or extended family and that’s including his mom, siblings and children. Actually, they intentionally kept distance from me and he kept his kids compartmentalized. The expectation with the kids seemed to be for me to remain available for convenience but not as a fully involved parental figure. What a time! Contrarily, he was pretty cool with my immediate and extended family. To the point where they would include him in their memorable life events. 

Separation was also my first time living on my own, well, technically. On one hand, I wasn't alone because my child was with me and on the other hand, I did live alone prior to marriage but I spent more time at his place than my own. Until I was separated, I hadn’t realized how much I was already doing on my own even while we were married. At this point, can we even call it a marriage? Dang, was it some sort of arrangement and I just didn’t realize it? Yikes! 

Anyway, after a two year separation, the divorce became finalized. I’m now nearly three years into my life post divorce. I’m comfortable with saying that I’m closer to being healed from the hurt of the failed relationship. I won’t say that I don’t or haven’t gotten pissed off at the random reach outs for reconciliation. What sends me to the furnace is how my child gets the short end of the stick. I won’t go any further with that. But …you should understand my drift.

God has truly kept me and my child! For that, all I can be is grateful and all I can do is thank him! 

Ok…that was a lot for me to openly share. Don’t leave me wondering, ask me some questions or leave me a comment and go back to the other two posts and comment as well.