March 19, 2011

Greetings My Friend,

Thoughts at large:

Junior and I celebrated 13 years of marriage recently….13 years wow! I was married 24 years in my first marriage and now 13…..I feel like I’m supposed to be a married lady. I love being Junior’s wife, I feel so safe with him and we are friends. I did not have that safe and friendship feeling the first time around. This time I am married to my best friend. The last time when people asked me about being my husband’s best friend I told them that my girlfriends were my best friend and my now ex was the man I was married to and had children with. To be honest I did not believe a man and a woman could be best friends

Divorce Recovery helped me so much. I learned to look at what went wrong the first time, my part of what I did to make the marriage not work. Once I got past that I was a victim and began to look at my part of what I contributed to the problems, I found such healing. By doing that I believe I was able to let go of bad faults and begin to embrace new habits, more healthy habits and in my heart I believe that is why our marriage is strong. Junior also insisted that I put God first before him. I have a tendency to want to put my husband on a pedestal and when he isn’t that perfect image, I get so disappointed and then I can’t see their good qualities.

Divorce Recovery taught me that the order should be God first, marriage relationship second and life will settle in right after that. As I implement this strategy I find that to be the best way to live my life. When Junior frustrates me I tend to go to prayer. As I pray I find God pointing me to look at Junior’s heart and in that I fall in love with him all over again. I am not disappointed.

Through the years I’ve also learned to hang around friends who love their husband. It helps me because then I focus on his good qualities and not his bad habits. Do I ever befriend someone who is struggling, yes I do. I try to surround myself with people who are supportive of me, my marriage. If I have a good support network, then when I am with someone who is struggling, I can step beside them and offer them support as well.

We are in the final stages of our move. Please if I ever say I want to move again….someone lock me up. Once we have everything in the house, in storage around the house, then Junior can go back to renovating the house.

As we found the house and began working on it, I had some people tell me that “I wouldn’t….” Personally I would have liked to move into a house that required a whole lot less work. I also believe God led us to this house and there was a reason for us to have so much work to do. For my part, I am so focused on the house and my book that I don’t have time to dwell on all the struggles in my life. I am so much more a part of the move process this time around. I don’t fall asleep all the time. God is helping me walk away from depression and this was the process by which to walk away. I also believe God is impressing on me that a new home is not going to solve all my problems.

My ex and I lived in Lincoln Park for many years. As our son had problems, we thought a move may help him. We moved and I finally had my dream home. That dream home was filled with so much strife. I soon began to feel like I’d rather have a dump and peace than a beautiful home. When Junior and I moved to Virginia we loved the place we rented. It was extremely small but I thought that I would love it and learn to live in a very small home. I loved the river, the train track right in front of the house and the mountains with all the woods. It was beautiful. The wraparound porch was icing on the cake. Junior has owned a home for 40 some years, me 30 some. We truly did not know how to be renters. We thought loving the home as if it were ours was the way to be good renters. We had definite likes and dislikes and we tried to make it to our taste.

We learned a little too late that we needed to not try to make it ours. We learned that we should just occupy the home with no taste of our own. We then decided we would buy this place and we love the process of making it unique to us. We tried to hire contractors with no luck. Junior is doing most of the renovating. He loves it. I feel like he loves doing it for me. He starts early in the morning and works late into the evening. Through the years I’ve learned to be patient. He is creative and the little touches he puts in place are always so awesome. The renovating may take another year or two, that’s ok. We hopefully will never move again. We will have this home exactly the way we want it.

May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you.

Love
Janet