Life Is Good

It’s been awhile since I blogged last, so I’m interested to see if anyone is still reading this.   I meant to blog my heart out over break, but it was busy and when I tried the words wouldn’t come.  I figure there’s no reason to pour my heart out if there’s nothing pressing to say.

Wow.  Life is good.  Not just kinda-sorta good, but really good.  Like I don’t even understand how I could finally have moved from waking up wanting to die every day to grudgingly getting along with life to this…just happy.  God is so amazing; I know that it is only by His strength that this has happened, and I am  humbled to know that He has chosen to make Himself so clearly visible within my life.  What a privilage it is to have such an amazing Savior!

We have officially lived in Hutchinson for 7 months now, and I think it was at about the six month mark we found ourselves really settling in, feeling like this was home.  For me, making a couple of trips back home around the holidays really solidified that for some reason.  I think it has something to do with the fact that I have (finally) become mature enough to appreciate my parents and the home that they made, which makes me happy to go back to visit, but that I have also  made a great home here that I am happy to come back to.  Work is also going great; it usually takes about a semester to really get comfortable in a new district, and I think that I have reached that point where I can focus more on what makes me a successful teacher while still being aware of all of the new policies and procedures that this district has in place.

The girls…what to say…they are doing fairly well.  It’s such an up and down thing with them.  I read an article about divorce once that said that children suffer the most in a divorce and parents don’t realize it because, for a parent, there is the initial blow (or blows) of the broken dream, and obviously there is suffering, but at some point, life can get better and you can move past that person.  For a child, they are constantly living the reality of divorce, because they still have these two people they love.  It is a broken hurt that cannot be reconciled for them.  At some point all divorcees can say “I don’t love him or her any more,” but for a child that does not happen.  They will always have these two people that they love with all their hearts, but who don’t necessarily care for eachother.  I saw this clearly on Sunday when my girls came home from their dad’s: out of nowhere, my seven-year-old said, “Mommy, I wish you and Daddy were still married.”  Wow.  It was unexpected, and I didn’t know what to say.  I just hugged her and told her I was sure that it is hard for her to deal with that.

All-in-all they are doing pretty well; we have really gone through some major bonding, and I feel like as we build our experiences as a new kind of family it serves us all better.  We still have tantrums and irresponsibility, but we’re holding our own.  One of the best books I read after my divorce was “The Five Love Languages of Children” by Gary Smalley.  If you haven’t read that book and you deal with children anywhere in your life, you should.  It is incredibly insightful.  I have a list of the languages hanging on my refrigerator along with 1 Corinthians 13 (“Love is”).  This verse is usually referenced in marriage, but it also pertains to other relationships.  I’m really trying to focus on their love languages, which is a challenge for me; they are both very much “Quality Time” girls, which is a challenge since there is only one of me (hard to give them individual time) and because I tend to multitask when they need my full attention.  I hope that we continue to make progress; I feel like I know them and they know me better than ever, so we’ll get there together.

Consider this to be my “reentry into the blogosphere…I actually have a major topic on my mind that will be coming into play soon, but thought I would just give a general update for now.  Pressing on isn’t so hard when life is good, and I am aware that these good times must be appreciated and not taken for granted.  God is good…He can get anyone through anything, and I am proof of that!

~ by Jenn on January 16, 2009.