Two Years

This picture is of incredible significance to me.

I took it just before Austin moved out, well after we decided to get divorced. I've kept it in my wallet ever since. It has brought me peace every time I look at it. It made me think, "Okay, we can do this. They will be okay because they've got each other." They were three and four.

Today marks two years from the night my ex-husband moved out. Mom, that's TWO.

Yes, that's right.

It's been two years since you moved from me

Packed your things aside

and said "I'm leaving"

Four years since you came to me saying

"I don't have a testimony"

Eight years since we fell in love

Choosing each other forever and ever

Seems like yesterday that it happened

But it also feels like someone else's story

A lot has happened since then. A lot has changed. And some things haven't changed.

I have worked at the same place for five years. I have also had a period of no work, and a period with two additional jobs. 

I have two amazing kids. I came to terms with the possibility of not have more children and accepting that. I'm still a mom, but now I'm a single mom. A dating mom. It's a huge challenge, trying to balance this double life. I finally feel comfortable combining the two, only because I finally have a partner I trust and love completely.

I live in a different place. And at the same time, I live in the same place I did 20 year ago (when I was in jr high). I went from a large space on a farm, to a tiny house in a side yard. And now I'm back in the room I grew up in (because a close friend needed a place to stay so I gave her my tiny house for the time being).

I have met some incredible people, whom I have become close to. I have learned from them. Cried with them. Prayed for them. Worked with them. Served with them. Traveled with them. I have loved them. The people I have met because I got divorced is one of my greatest blessings. I am truly grateful for each person who has entered my life and helped shape who I am now.

Especially Trevor. And his family, who I look forward to being able to call my family.

It's been a year and a half since it was final

Signed the papers and it was all over

Found new friends who understand me

I've still got the girls for all eternity

It's been three months since the FHE

Where I met a great guy not a moment too soon 

I learned he was meant for me

And now I sit back and wait for us to get married

The most important thing that has stayed the same is that I have a testimony of my God. I know I have a Father in Heaven who loves me, has a plan for me, and won't let anything frustrate that plan. I know my Savior lived a perfect life, suffered and died for me, so that I can turn to Him with every need, question, worry, or hope. I am fully known and deeply loved. I am grateful for the path my life has taken. Even though while I was going through parts of it I would have done anything to change it. I have learned to trust in God fully and to not fight His will or timing.

Love and Loneliness

Amelia has been playing this game where she practices not listening to me at all. She has mastered turning the hearing part of her ears off as easily as closing her eyes to not see. And since she doesn't hear me, she doesn't obeying. Obedience really does show love. It's insanely frustrating.

It wouldn't be so bad if it were just sometimes, but it's literally all the time. With me. She listens to other people. It makes me feel like she hates me. It's not just that it's disrespectful, but it instills fear in my heart. There is a lot of differing and contradictory information that people she should be able to trust are going to tell her. I want her to learn to listen to me now.
But when she doesn't I feel hopeless and that spirals quickly.

Loneliness sets into my heart and I lose the sense or desire to go on. It's like a dark cloud in my mind. My medication helps a lot with this, but it's not gone completely. Sometime it gets heavy and has to rain tears of frustration, irritable sadness, and pain.

The day my ex-husband moved out was the first day I stopped feeling the loneliest I've ever felt. It was because hope filled my heart. I didn't know who or what would enter my life, and at first I wasn't picky, I had no expectations.

But over the two years I've been single again I have learned more of what I want and need in my life and in a partner. I have resolved to not settle for less that what I truly deserve. Even if that means waiting my whole life, giving up on the last of my dreams and letting go of the plans I had for myself, all so that I can submit fully to what God has planned for me.

And He led me to Trevor.

Trevor so willingly and insistently gives me what I really want. He doesn't let me let go of hope. He see what I need and steps up to help. He builds me up and sees the good in me even when I can't.

So tonight, after a very long couple of weeks of not getting to see him very much due to sickness and other obligations, I had a little breakdown. Negative thoughts and emotions have been attacking me, even in the forms of dreams. Satan keeps telling me I don't deserve happiness and that I make the lives of the people around me worse.

I need extra spiritual strength. I would normally go to the temple, but that has been closed. So guess what I'm left with. Yep, the primary answers.

I also read a book called God Loves You to my kids tonight and it actually made me feel a little better.