Plain and Simple

Our life has become somewhat predictable. There is comfort in structure and routines, something this rebellious carefree mama never thought she would say. 

I thought about this tonight as I laid out Michael’s clothes for tomorrow - his signature look right now of black jeans and a fresh white t-shirt (yes, it makes me think of Plain White T’s and Rhythm of Love). My charger wasn’t in its usual place and as I tiptoed carefully through a land mine of LEGOS in the dark (a successful obstacle course if you ask me), I just felt deeply how much I enjoy being a mother. 

I always wanted to have my own children, from the earliest age I knew that was a possibility and I remember adopting anything I could as “children” until I got my own. Now, more than dolls or babies I would snatch at church or children I would babysit and pretend they were my own, I now have three little miniatures I grew in my own belly. They carry my DNA and we share the same last name (the one and only reason I kept it after divorce). 

Oh divorce. I could write an entire book about you. How you unexpectedly turned up and disrupted my life, upsetting the expectations I had for eternity and leaving me in a crumble of tears. If only I would have trusted you enough to let go of the life I was clinging to so badly, I would have known you would hand me a life that was so much better. A life that was free. A life that hurt less and made so much more sense. Yes divorce, you taught me that different isn’t always bad, as my friend Mindy says, and that when things go wrong, it’s usually so they can turn out right. 

So this musing is really just an attempt to say that while life is unpredictable and there is comfort in the expected, paradoxically just the opposite can be quite as true. Divorce, I haven’t earned my highest diploma yet, but I look forward to a lifetime of learning ahead because I know that without you, I would have missed out on so many intoxicating life lessons. 

xo