Happier times

Some of these moments above were the happiest in my life. And for a long time I wouldn't have been able to look at these photos without bursting into tears or feeling a huge amount of bitterness or regret.

And now...... I look back and am grateful for the time I had with my then husband. "Why?" people have asked me in a shocked tone.

Because since the age of sixteen (when I very foolishly moved in with my first boyfriend) I have always been in a relationship or wishing ferevently that I was. I was never OK just being alone, my only goals in life were to be a wife and mother and if that didn't happen, well then life wasn't worth living. I would forever be a failure, alone with my fifty cats and TV dinners.

I have spent my whole life trying to be someone elses idea of perfect that along the way I have forgot how to be myself.

When my Husband left me (all three times) it hurt more than anything else I have ever experienced. Worse than my sister commiting suicide, worse than my miscarriage, worse even than the time I was raped (sorry if this offends anyone but I'm just trying to be truthful).

But eventually I learned about aspects of myself that wouldn't have happened if he had never left me.

I turned all my pain into passion. In all of it I became the women who I had always dreamed of being but never felt I could.

Yesterday my daughter and I were in an unground carpark and this song came on that we both loved so we started dancing to it, right there in front of everyone. That wouldn't have happened even a year ago because a.) I would have cared too much what people think and b.) good christian women don't draw attention to themselves.

I feel so full of joy, that rarely anything brings me down anymore. I guess mainly because I feel like I don't need anyone to define me anymore (except Jesus of course).

If God chooses to bring me another Husband and children well then that's great. But if he doesn't? Even then what an awesome life i'll lead, I'll be thirty five when Aviva is eighteen and years of travel and adventures will still lie before me.

This is going to be the last post I will do on my husband or my marriage because from now on I want to look forward and not behind.

Because I have had a few comments from people before on how I should wait for my husband no matter how long it takes I do want to say this.

I worked really, really hard on my marriage and I did not let it go without a fight. I tried very hard to be the wife my husband wanted but no matter what I did it was never, ever good enough. Eventually I had to let him go, it was destroying my mental health and that of my daughter but it wasn't easy and I didn't do it without a lot of prayer. And also in case this sounds bitter towards my husband, he tried his hardest to love me but in the end just didn't have the emotional capacity to be a husband to me or a father to my daughter.

My circumstances may not look that fantastic on the outside but truly I have never been happier.

Again I am sorry that there are no spaces between paragraphs but blogger wont let me (yet again)