Now Let's Flash Forward...

(If you haven't read, "Socks," yet, read that blog first; this will make much more sense if you have, I promise.) So step across the calendar by 18 months to today. Obviously, and thankfully, I am not at that same point in my life. I don't know that time necessarily heals all wounds; rather, I believe that time lessens the rawness and the sting of the wound. That has certainly been the case for me. There was a time when my thoughts were constantly, "This is my life now. This has really happened. This is who you are." I had to remind myself daily because, as any mother of toddlers knows, one can really lose themselves in the mundane, everyday tasks of running a busy household. Once I got to the point where I didn't have to do that every day, I felt like I either needed to get busy living or get busy dying. My life cannot always be about my loss, cannot always be defined by my unique circumstances. This man that I love and was married to will not be part of my future, and that's a weird thought sometimes. Most people, upon getting married, really take for granted that they will be a part of each other's lives for an undetermined number of years that will span a long lifetime. At first, I really rejected the thought that T. would not always be alongside me. I didn't like it and, quite frankly, didn't appreciate all the reminders that my life was different from everyone else's.

It wasn't until I consciously decided that I really believed that I could have a future of my own that I was even remotely open to love. And I mean love. Not this crap you see in movies and VH1 CelebReality shows. I mean the kind where not every single day is necessarily sunshine and lollypops. The kind of love that says, "I accept you and adore you for who you are, even when you irritate the crap out of me!" The kind of love that allows you to feel sexy even when your stomach looks like someone let the air out of it after having two kids. The kind of love that says, "This is scarier than the thought of having a root canal without novacaine, but I love this person so much, I want to let them into my heart, broken and mending and ridiculous, because I want them alongside of me through it all."

I never guessed where, how, or when this would have transpired for me. R.'s and my romance has been so completely unusual, not just for us but for anyone. It has been in falling in love with him that I have learned to quit trying to measure my life by other's yardsticks. God provided R. for me in direct answer to prayer. Even the fact that I have the emotional capacity to experience love again is a direct answer to prayer. It has been so hard for me to let go of the reigns of my life and give them over to God. Those of you who know me well know that I should have, "RNTM," tattooed on my forehead. (Right Now This Minute, for those out of the loop.) Having to be patient with God to make good on His promise to bring to me, not just a companion, but a soul mate, having to be patient with God to bring our future together to pass on His timing, and so on, are excruciating for me. But what amazes me every day, when I hear his deep, mellow voice coming from 3500 miles away, is that he's here in my life, that I'm being given a second chance at happiness that so few others seem to get even the first time around. It just blows my mind to see how far I've come in such a short amount of time...