Looking Forward With Hope

It’s the second day of the new year and here I am again reflecting on the past. Today’s musing is courtesy of having been found on Facebook by an old pen pal. We met online in a pen-pal forum in 2002, and we started exchanging long, chatty letters about our lives. In those days I was newly married, expecting my third baby girl and trying my hand at being a SAHM (stay-at-home-mom). When baby girl was about nine month old, and I had become I was crazed with boredom from staying home, I started working again. I no longer had as much leisure time, so my letters became fewer and farther between until I just could not find a quiet moment to sit and write any more and Liz and I lost touch. Years passed and my life was being completely transformed. But when I look back on those days and all of the time that I invested in learning how to be a good wife, when I had been a single mom for the previous twelve years I have to laugh to keep from crying. I invested so much energy and devotion in being a ‘good wife.’ I had to learn the hard way how devastating it is to discover that you have been leaning your ladder against the wrong wall.

Getting out of that marriage and resurrecting my life has been a huge accomplishment for me. Forgiving myself for having married the wrong person and for having wasted so much of myself on someone who did not deserve me will take some time. But God is good and His mercy endures forever. There is always grace, and the lessons learned were hard won and they continue to inform my life as I move forward.

So, on the last day of the year as I was tying up the loose ends I sat down and penned a letter to my old pen pal. I felt as though I was writing with the shadow of my old self peering over my shoulder. That young woman was amazed at how much I would experience and grow from in the following six years. I sensed as she read what I was writing that she was proud of me for having gotten out of a bad marriage, for taking care of myself and my girls, and for being brave enough to find love again. As the year wound down I wrote about the things in my life that had changed and about all that I was looking forward to in the new year. I look forward to reading Liz’s reply and hearing about what she’s been up to since we lost touch with each other.

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