Tomorrow would have been my 13th wedding anniversary.
It surprises me that I thought of it today. I didn't think about it at all last year. One day, many weeks after my 12th anniversary...I thought "oh, we've been married twelve years now." I didn't feel sadness or pain. Just thought it was very interesting that I didn't live or talk with my husband and yet anniversaries kept rolling by.
This year is different. I thought about it during my commute and realized why. This sadness over this divorce is mourning, but not for me. It's for my children.
My daughters turned five last week. A real milestone. And we celebrated like crazy. Made their day special, had a party for them...Grandpa sent us all to Disneyland. It was a wonderful time, one of the best chunks of life we have lived.
But one night I was incredibly sad in the middle of it all. And I've been hit with waves of sadness almost daily since. I am sad because my children have known too much, been separated from their parents too much, and been tossed around too much. Too much for their short little lives. Way too much.
My children have also been stuck with a weird self-imposed responsibility. They feel they have to explain to their friends from intact families why we live the way we do. I've overheard it...my four year old daughters trying to explain why their dad does not live with them. It is heartbreaking.
And my heart hurts so badly for them. Today I looked at their little two year old faces in pictures and remember them screaming for Daddy as he left, their fingers reaching for him under their bedroom door.
I wish things had been better for them. I wish they never had to go through that.
And so I am in mourning. Not because of a loss of a marriage, but a loss of so many happy days that could have been...for my children.
It's a normal process of grieving loss, these waves of mourning, so I'm not obsessed over the gravity of it. However, I do wonder how in the world God is going to use this awful circumstance in my little daughters' lives to bring something good, to bring Him glory. I just don't see it yet. But I'm in the business of waiting. And believing. So we'll see.
