My Own Ever After: Chapter Twelve
Stepping into Ever After Prologue If I ever begin to question God’s timing again—scratch that—the next time I begin to question God’s timing, I need to remember this chapter, this moment in my life. I felt compelled to write my story last fall. I ignored the prompting in my spirit to write all winter long. Late winter, I finally put fingers to keyboard. It wasn’t until I decided to release it on my blog each week that I truly began to make progress. That was 12 weeks ago. At the time, I knew my marriage was over, but I didn’t know where I was headed, where this story was headed.
As I sit to (belatedly) write this chapter, I am listening to my Charlie-dog snore contentedly on my bed. In the other room, I can hear my boys watching a movie as they wind down from their day. Beside me, my budgies are chattering my ear off, presumably telling me all about their day. What’s special about this moment is that it’s happening in my new house. My new home.
We thought we’d found the perfect house to rent, but it fell through. Another house seemed okay—we were all a little meh about it but figured it would do—but it had six people competing for it. Houses for rent in this town are scarce at the moment. So, at Dylan’s prompting, I called on a house that we’d seen for sale in town. I thought it would be too small. I thought there was no way I could buy a house. I thought a lot of things.
But I prayed that God would lead us home, and then I did my very best to truly leave it in his hands. The first time I saw this house, I wasn’t sure. I walked through it a second time and thought, this just might work. By the third walk-through, I was falling in love. Chris, like me, had to walk through it a couple of times to be sold. Blake was cool from the get-go. Dylan, from the moment he saw it, knew this was the one. Whenever I started to doubt, he reminded me this was the one.
There is a part of me that is tempted to sit and write out the details from that moment to this one because they are too perfectly, intricately timed to be coincidence. But I think the telling might get a bit convoluted, the details mean more to me than they would to another. Still, I am convinced to the very fiber of my being that God did, in fact, lead us home.
The house might not look like much to someone else. It’s a little white house with a green roof. It was built in 1900, which we think is terribly cool but does come with its own set of challenges. It’s officially a two bed, one bath, but it has a screened in porch on the back that I’m turning into my room. The first bedroom is massive, so two of the boys easily divided it to accommodate both of them. We actually wound up with quite a bit more space. The house is adorable and we’re even more in love than we were before. It’s in easy walking distance of anywhere we truly need to be, so not having a car is survivable.
Of course, our little haven isn’t without its share of trouble. At first, the water heater didn’t work. A tip from a friend at church help solve that problem, so we had hot water by our second full day. About the time the tank filled and got good and hot, Dylan was tightening the hot water hose on the washing machine when the pipe it connected to snapped, effectively creating a volcano of hot water shooting into my kitchen. I was trying to hold the pipes together, screaming “Make it stop. Somebody make it stop.” Teenage boys, some not even my own, were scrambling like mad to comply, even though they had no idea what to do.
By the time we got the water shut off, we had a good 50 gallons of hot water in my kitchen and Dylan and I were soaked to the bone. My drywall, well, I kinda wanted to try wood paneling in that spot anyway. A friend and former neighbor, God bless him, came out and taught Dylan how to fix the pipe, offering to walk him through anything else that arose after this. The entire weekend, the entire move process, was a testament to the amazing people we have in our lives. We are blessed beyond measure.
Now that I don’t have hot water spraying me in the face, I can laugh about the incident. But I think, on some level, it was a sobering moment for Dylan. Right, wrong, or indifferent, he’s been the de facto second adult in the house since he was, I don’t know, ten. In that moment, I think he realized that he was stepping into a whole new level of adulthood. I want to reassure him that he’s still a teenager. The burden to support us, to fix the broken pipes and fill the pantry, falls on me. But the reality is that he will accept more of that burden than he should. It’s in his nature.
To their credit, his brothers are stepping up. They’re mowing lawns for extra money rather than asking me for it. They’re helping around the house, being more responsible for their own schedules. Whatever the road ahead holds, we’re in this thing together. We’ve got each other’s back.
It’s been not quite a week since we loaded our meager belongings on my daddy’s trailer and hauled them to our new house. Already, a friend commented that I look like a new woman. I certainly feel like a new woman. I look back at the creature I had become and I don’t recognize her. She feels foreign to me.
So many people, when they hear about the divorce, express their sympathy. I feel bad, but I’m not sad. I miss my horses, my land. But even that isn’t as deep of an ache as I’d anticipated. There is such peace in our new home—even the dogs are calmer, happier. But I think it’s because I did my mourning a decade ago. There was a time when I wept for the passing of my marriage. But that time isn’t now.
My finances are no more certain than they were a week ago. There are still mountains in my path. But for the first time in a long time, I feel as if I can find joy even in the climb.
I don’t know what the future holds for me. I have no clue what my own ever after will look like. I told a friend recently that I feel like I’m staring at a blank canvas, wondering what to paint. Maybe the picture will include a love story of my own, maybe not. As lonely as I’ve been, I do know that I have to show myself at least as much respect as I expect others to show me. I hope I’ve learned my lesson to never again allow another to devalue my place in humanity. I have to be the kind of woman I write books about if I ever hope to meet the kind of man I write books about, if I ever hope to raise the kind of men I want my boys to be.
Whatever my ever after looks like, it’s out there. And I intend to find it.
As I sit to (belatedly) write this chapter, I am listening to my Charlie-dog snore contentedly on my bed. In the other room, I can hear my boys watching a movie as they wind down from their day. Beside me, my budgies are chattering my ear off, presumably telling me all about their day. What’s special about this moment is that it’s happening in my new house. My new home.
We thought we’d found the perfect house to rent, but it fell through. Another house seemed okay—we were all a little meh about it but figured it would do—but it had six people competing for it. Houses for rent in this town are scarce at the moment. So, at Dylan’s prompting, I called on a house that we’d seen for sale in town. I thought it would be too small. I thought there was no way I could buy a house. I thought a lot of things.
But I prayed that God would lead us home, and then I did my very best to truly leave it in his hands. The first time I saw this house, I wasn’t sure. I walked through it a second time and thought, this just might work. By the third walk-through, I was falling in love. Chris, like me, had to walk through it a couple of times to be sold. Blake was cool from the get-go. Dylan, from the moment he saw it, knew this was the one. Whenever I started to doubt, he reminded me this was the one.
There is a part of me that is tempted to sit and write out the details from that moment to this one because they are too perfectly, intricately timed to be coincidence. But I think the telling might get a bit convoluted, the details mean more to me than they would to another. Still, I am convinced to the very fiber of my being that God did, in fact, lead us home.
The house might not look like much to someone else. It’s a little white house with a green roof. It was built in 1900, which we think is terribly cool but does come with its own set of challenges. It’s officially a two bed, one bath, but it has a screened in porch on the back that I’m turning into my room. The first bedroom is massive, so two of the boys easily divided it to accommodate both of them. We actually wound up with quite a bit more space. The house is adorable and we’re even more in love than we were before. It’s in easy walking distance of anywhere we truly need to be, so not having a car is survivable.
Of course, our little haven isn’t without its share of trouble. At first, the water heater didn’t work. A tip from a friend at church help solve that problem, so we had hot water by our second full day. About the time the tank filled and got good and hot, Dylan was tightening the hot water hose on the washing machine when the pipe it connected to snapped, effectively creating a volcano of hot water shooting into my kitchen. I was trying to hold the pipes together, screaming “Make it stop. Somebody make it stop.” Teenage boys, some not even my own, were scrambling like mad to comply, even though they had no idea what to do.
By the time we got the water shut off, we had a good 50 gallons of hot water in my kitchen and Dylan and I were soaked to the bone. My drywall, well, I kinda wanted to try wood paneling in that spot anyway. A friend and former neighbor, God bless him, came out and taught Dylan how to fix the pipe, offering to walk him through anything else that arose after this. The entire weekend, the entire move process, was a testament to the amazing people we have in our lives. We are blessed beyond measure.
Now that I don’t have hot water spraying me in the face, I can laugh about the incident. But I think, on some level, it was a sobering moment for Dylan. Right, wrong, or indifferent, he’s been the de facto second adult in the house since he was, I don’t know, ten. In that moment, I think he realized that he was stepping into a whole new level of adulthood. I want to reassure him that he’s still a teenager. The burden to support us, to fix the broken pipes and fill the pantry, falls on me. But the reality is that he will accept more of that burden than he should. It’s in his nature.
To their credit, his brothers are stepping up. They’re mowing lawns for extra money rather than asking me for it. They’re helping around the house, being more responsible for their own schedules. Whatever the road ahead holds, we’re in this thing together. We’ve got each other’s back.
It’s been not quite a week since we loaded our meager belongings on my daddy’s trailer and hauled them to our new house. Already, a friend commented that I look like a new woman. I certainly feel like a new woman. I look back at the creature I had become and I don’t recognize her. She feels foreign to me.
So many people, when they hear about the divorce, express their sympathy. I feel bad, but I’m not sad. I miss my horses, my land. But even that isn’t as deep of an ache as I’d anticipated. There is such peace in our new home—even the dogs are calmer, happier. But I think it’s because I did my mourning a decade ago. There was a time when I wept for the passing of my marriage. But that time isn’t now.
My finances are no more certain than they were a week ago. There are still mountains in my path. But for the first time in a long time, I feel as if I can find joy even in the climb.
I don’t know what the future holds for me. I have no clue what my own ever after will look like. I told a friend recently that I feel like I’m staring at a blank canvas, wondering what to paint. Maybe the picture will include a love story of my own, maybe not. As lonely as I’ve been, I do know that I have to show myself at least as much respect as I expect others to show me. I hope I’ve learned my lesson to never again allow another to devalue my place in humanity. I have to be the kind of woman I write books about if I ever hope to meet the kind of man I write books about, if I ever hope to raise the kind of men I want my boys to be.
Whatever my ever after looks like, it’s out there. And I intend to find it.
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