How It Began (1 of 40)

Some years ago, a cousin of mine was getting ready to turn 30. I found out through my sister that she had come up with a list of 30 things that were important to her to accomplish before her milestone birthday. I loved the idea. When I turned 30, I was 7 years married with a toddler and a infant. As a stay at home parent, my life revolved around the members of my family and the church we were a part of. By 36, I was facing divorce, the need to start a career that would take me out of the home and more loss than I had the capacity to comprehend. It was around this time that I heard about my cousin's list and I decided to make one of my own.

When life changes suddenly and drastically, everything looks different. When I was attempting to sleep train my children, one book I read suggested not moving a child once they were asleep. It argued that if an adult was somehow moved during their sleep cycle only to discover this change part way through the night as they inevitably aroused, the natural confusion and panic would cause great disruption and fear. When my marriage ended, it felt very much as if I had been sleeping for a long time and I suddenly awoke in a foreign reality with no idea of how we had ended up there. 

My identity as an adult had been fully wrapped up in those around me. I spent my days managing my household, caring for my kids, supporting my spouse as he worked outside the home, volunteering my time to leadership roles at our church, and cultivating the friendships that we had enjoyed for a decade. I believed I was living the "right" way. I believed that if I just focused hard enough, struggled silently enough, sacrificed enough of myself, I would be protected from the real hardships in life. I was like an ostrich, burying my head in the sand and ignoring the truths that were swirling around me.

And I was wrong.

In 2016, friends I loved dearly were hit with an unimaginable tragedy and everything I thought I knew about life and faith and safety began to unravel for me. To be fair, the unraveling really started in the months before the tragedy as I became less and less able to unquestioningly accept things I was seeing happening around me. This one event, however, served as the culminating catalyst for me to finally address the question of what I truly stood on and believed...and what I no longer did. 

I think a great misconception about the person who asks for the divorce is that they somehow hurt less or deserve less compassion than the partner who is left. As someone who has lived it, let me assure you it is not the case. I was devastated that my marriage was over. I never thought divorce would be part of my story. I felt incredibly burdened by the pain this caused my husband and most importantly my children. But the thing was, I was not wrong. For the first time in my adult life, I was clear. I had been trying to save our marriage for years. I was doing everything in my power to convince myself things were okay. I believed if I merely served him more selflessly, built up our social life more fully, served more faithfully at our church, prayed harder, needed less, gave more...we would someday get to a place where our marriage actually was what I wanted it to be. 

But with this tragedy, I had to reconcile how much I was using our friends and the church to bolster the breakdown in our marriage. I had to reconcile that while I did believe in a God who could restore my marriage, I no longer believed He necessarily would. I had believed that my Christianity would protect me, protect my family, protect my marriage and yet I had seen firsthand that simply being Christian was no guarantor of safety. Deep down, I had known my marriage was over for a long time. I guess I had been awaiting my own resurrection of sorts. But this perfect storm in 2016 cracked my faith and my façade. I would have to pick up my shattered life and build something new. 

So what does this have to do with 40 By Forty? These past four years have been the most devastating of my life. I have been gutted, ripped raw, isolated, heartbroken, betrayed, and disillusioned. I have also been pushed, stretched, grown, emboldened, freed and rebuilt. As I approach a new decade, one in which I will arrive independent of a marriage partnership, I want to recognize some of the stepping stones on which this new life is being built. As such, I curated a list of 40(ish) things I want to accomplish or experience before my big Four-Oh. Some things are simple, some are profound. Some will be works in progress, some have already been fulfilled. Some are goal-oriented, while others are pure enjoyment. Starting a blog is on that list. I hope to leave this as a testimony for myself and my children of what good can still be built out of the loss we never thought we'd have.