35 years

Today is Mike's birthday.  It would have been 35 and I imagine that I would have planned a big party or maybe something small just with family, but maybe we would have had kids by now, maybe not, these are some of the millions of thoughts that have crossed my mind this week and well often fill my mind.  However God's plans are perfect and His timing is perfect and what we dream of or speculate what we think our lives would be like His plans trump ours.  Emotionally these "big" calandar days always throw me for a loop.  I am living a life that looks nothing like what I imagined and had you told me 6 years ago this would be my life ( or even 2 years ago) I would have told you you were crazy! I still find myself wanting to make sense of it, but it doesn't, I want to not miss him anymore, but I still do.  This becomes a challange when you have a new husband (who is a great guy, so don't think otherwise) who you are supposed to be completely happy with and yet I still have this void.  I feel like a soap opera story line half the time in my life, which I think my life would make a pretty good soap opera, (minus all the affairs and murders and lies and well maybe not so much....) but what if Mike came back who would I choose? Its a good thing I wont ever have to answer that question. In Heaven no one is married as marriage is a earthly picture of what our relationship will be like with God.  Now its hard for me to make this picture mainly because my view of marriage is flawed by the fact that both my marriages are marriages between sinners who cannot love the way God can and does and will love us. To love and be loved perfectly is unconprehendible to me and I cant wait to experience it.  no more emotional roller coaster days, just perfect peace and joy.  no more questions, no more disapointments.  Heaven sounds so good!

10 years

Ten years is a long time, or so I thought.  10 years ago today Mike proposed.  I remember it, almost every detail of it, and back then I had no idea how my life would end up.  Today I went to the beach and thought about all the dreams that he and I had at one point in time.  Some dreams we got to expierience while others I had to stay goodbye to when I said goodbye to him.  I was reading two books today, one a grief book- which was bad, Ive yet to find a helpful grief book, the other If God is good, a book on evil.  I know I don't pick such light reading.  However, what I realized yet again today is that God works in ways that I cannot imagine.  I have learned so much in the last 5 years that if I had my way, I wouldn't have learned.  I still find it hard to make plans, for in my mind I feel that any plan I have will surely end in disaster (either for me or for those who are close to me). I know that God has a plan and it is for my good.  I know that trials are to teach me and to grow my faith and make me more like Christ.  This past year has been so odd.  I feel uncomfortable in my own skin most days torn and confused about who I am the choices I have made, and what Im doing and where exactly I am supposed to be.  I know I will never get direct answers to any of my questions and can only pray for wisdom.  I wonder in 10 years what will I be doing, what memories will I cherish from now.  Will I be proud of the choices I made or regret them.  Saying yes that night to him changed the course of my life in ways that I could not imagine that night.  I thank God for the gift he gave me in Mike, and know that His plans are perfect, and joys and trials I have now are gifts too.  10 years is not that long.