Thanks for the holiday wishes. I hope you all had a nice Christmas, although I know you didn't Jo. That sounded like the Christmas from hell. Staying in the barn with animals and their manure would have seemed like a resort in comparison.
My Christmas was excellent. Taking my boys to their first pro football game was the best gift I could have received this year. We had a great time and made memories.
I still feel that some of my experiences are dampened by this lingering divorce cloud, but it's getting better. I'll just keep making pleasant memories to take the place of bad ones.
The subject of this post is "The lies we tell ourselves?" It's a question because I don't know the truth of it. I often write and often read about moving on, coming to terms with the divorce, not taking the ex back if he/she crawled over broken glass begging for another chance unless I was sure about her own personal growth, or how things are actually better without them. Are these truths or just clever lies we tell ourselves in our efforts to aid the healing process? Are we ready to move to surviving the Big D?
To be honest, I'm not quite where I'm ready to be. I can date, but I'm still scared of it. I'm fine most nights by myself or with my kids, but there is still this pall that hangs over me from this divorce. I still wonder if perhaps if I started dating my XW and getting to know her again if there isn't something there. I wonder if the times I miss her are more than simply missing the familiarity that married people share. Not being the one to leave I don't know if it goes both ways and it's a scar that affects the WAS as well. But regardless, I think even if at some level I'm lying to myself about how well things are progressing, it is still healthy. Sometimes you have to talk yourself into things.
I've been receiving this divorce care e-mails for a couple days and wanted to share the first day with you.
Quote: What's Happening? Day 1
Divorce is like a tornado—ripping through your life, threatening to destroy everything in its path. The emotional whirlwinds bring fear, confusion, and despair, affecting you, your children, family members, and friends. You will likely wonder Why did this storm hit my life and why does it hurt so much?
Dr. Jim A. Talley says, "The reality is that divorce is the most painful thing you can go through because it impacts so much of your life. There's no way around or easy way out. And everybody is looking for a painless way out of this whole situation."
It is easier to clean up the physical damage of a tornado than the emotional damage caused by divorce.
"I hated life," says Ginny. "I woke up every morning, and I absolutely hated it. I hated the pain that I woke up with and the pain that I went to sleep with."
You may wish you could get through the pain quicker, but healing is a process, a day-by-day, moment-by-moment process. In order to experience any level of recovery, you must see it through. There are no shortcuts. But take heart, in the coming days and weeks you will see it is possible to heal and to look to the future with hope.
"'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future'" (Jeremiah 29:11).
Even the lies we tell ourselves are probably part of this process.
In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years. Abraham Lincoln
It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. Theodore Roosevelt
