Celebrating 30 Years Of Unexpected Life And Love

Give yourself permission to allow this moment to be exactly as it is, and allow yourself to be exactly as you are.

Jon Kabat-Zinn

Today I acknowledge that it has been 30 years since I was first married – and I have gratitude for every year since that first day.  

Dave and I married on January 2, 1993, when we were 28 and 26 years old, respectively, meeting only months after I graduated from college and after dating for nearly four years.  We had plans for children, to complete our graduate degrees, to grow our careers, and to make our historic-yet-dilapidated, recently-purchased house a home.  We had just become part of a friendly community and church in Chester County, Pennsylvania, and our careers were growing successfully.  These were our plans.

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Although it has been said by many people over the years, it is John Lennon’s 1980 song, “Beautiful Boy” that best describes what I eventually discovered: 

“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”.

When we married, it was a life lesson that I had not yet learned.  Instead, I had spent the better part of my life up until then, believing wholeheartedly that I could create my life just how I had planned it!  As long as I worked hard, was cautious, if I researched, and made all the right choices, I believed I could create just the life I wanted.

Dave was less of a “firm planner” than me, and more of a “dreamer with a plan”, and that made us a great team.  He always had at least a half dozen options that he was working on in life and laid them out before me as if it was one of those “Choose Your Own Adventure” stories, where you make different selections as you read the book and are able to change the storyline as you went along.

Our skills and personalities were complementary.  We were both hard workers, tenacious, and diligent in achieving goals.  Dave found it easier to see the many options we could consider. He helped me see how our life could be exciting and fulfilling and good no matter which options we selected.  I was skilled at executing a plan’s details.  So once we selected a direction for our life together, I helped him take our plan to fruition, saving, organizing, and tying it up in a nice bow so that we could have a beautiful life.

The life we built together was indeed beautiful, and while many of those early goals were achieved, they looked uniquely and wonderfully different from what we initially worked for in our 20s.  We did have children, but only after years of struggles with infertility, which then also caused us to modify our direction and make some difficult and imperfect choices along the way.

We did make our run-down fixer-upper of a home quite nice and did nearly all the work on our own and with the help of family and friends, but we only lived in it for five years before using it as a residential rental.  We perhaps recognized that there was another community and church out there for us to love even more, now that we were parents – and there was.  We moved to Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, where Dave had grown up and where we planned to stay.

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We completed our graduate degrees, and Dave went on to complete his Ph.D. as well, and doing so opened up exactly the career progress we had planned for.  But parenthood stirred new ideas and feelings in our hearts, and before long, my full-time professional career in healthcare IT turned toward being a mother, a home economist, a family manager, a community volunteer, and a very part-time employee, all of which I had never planned for, but desired oh, so much by the time we made the changes.  

Dave changed universities more than once to provide long-term support for our children’s future educations, to be affiliated with schools that would best support his research in addiction treatment, and to have employers that complemented the goals he had in a non-profit we co-founded to aid our community and the surrounding region.

As life unfolded, the plans clearly changed with it.  Decades after meeting each other, we built a life that was rewarding, fulfilling, and happy.  Our focus had long ago shifted away from ourselves and toward the life we were creating for our three children.  Every decision made was made with their futures in mind, with their intended happiness at its core.

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The plans we made were our best efforts in controlling what was largely uncontrollable.  Ultimately the plans we made needed to adjust much more than either of us ever wanted – God’s plan for us was what we had yet to discover.  After 18 years of marriage, planning, adjusting, and building a life with my beloved husband, he died suddenly, leaving me and our three children to go on without him.  I was 44.  Adalie was 14.  Lorne was 11.  Ella was 9.  This was NEVER what I had planned.

~~~

Making sense of it all came from leaning into my faith, which had grown steadily throughout our marriage.  With unceasing prayer, hours spent alone in the Perpetual Adoration chapel, joining bible study groups, attending Mass or other church events, and with the loving support of my family and a very good therapist, I very slowly pulled through the darkest, and bit-by-bit began to understand.

My life had been planned in its entirety, and yet here I was, facing an existence that I had never wished for or even foresaw.  Reliance upon my faith taught me about Proverbs 16:9 – “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps”.  This message and so many others in God’s word resonated differently with me as a widow.  I devoured the lessons that would heal my brokenness and help me understand the purpose of our suffering. 

 The words do not mean that God intended harm upon my family.  He doesn’t want us to be in pain.  But He does have a specific intention for each of our lives, and as my life unfolds, each step gets me closer to God’s desires for me.

Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails.

Proverbs 19:21

Laura Story released a song entitled “Blessings” in 2011, weeks before Dave died.  The lyrics were an eloquent way of helping me understand how the trials of our lives are God’s hidden mercies.  The song hit number one on the music charts right as I needed to hear the words and remained on the charts for most of 2011.  To further paraphrase the lyrics, I learned that there are many blessings amongst the raindrops of life and we can be healed by working through our pain and tears.  It took those years of loss and loneliness and fear to slowly use my faith as a tool to thrive once again.  Eventually, I was reminded that love is always at the center of God’s intentions for us.  The dark veil was lifting ever so slowly.  

“And even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

Aeschylus, poet

One morning, several years later, I quite unexpectedly met with my high school sweetheart, Andy.  While I had loved Dave for most of my life, he was not my first love.  That was Andy.  We had parted ways 30 years earlier (there is that number again) and reunited at a time when we both wanted desperately to live a contented and happy life again.  We dated and rekindled a love that we both thought had been lost forever.  

Andy and I were both reeling from a number of difficulties in our lives, and it was in holding each other that we found solace, hope, and a desire to be redeemed in love.  Our renewed love eased the burdens of our losses.  We married the following year, moved my family to my home state of Maryland, and did our best to raise our children despite the scars left on all our hearts.  

It wasn’t always easy, but as I have learned, God never promised it would be easy.  None of it was perfect.  God didn’t promise that either.  Very little went as I had planned.  But with every labored breath, every tear, and every rainfall along the way, I understood that God was there, directing my steps and showing His love for me, my children, my new husband, his children, and our merged and broken families.

Today, Andy and I have been married for seven years.  Our marriage relationship and our love are much different than I’ve previously experienced, but also wonderful.  He is the man that has taught me how deep and wide love can be.  We have learned that love lasts forever and has an unending capacity in our hearts.  

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Love doesn’t end after a loss.  It remains, and the more we live, learn and love, we gain an ever-growing capacity to give and receive more love – because it is our teacher, our life’s gift, and God’s greatest desire for us – to love others.

Our shared six children are now all adults, building careers and finding partners to love, and yes, they too, are making plans.  We are expecting our first grandchild this spring and we are traveling quite a lot – living a life that is largely unrecognizable from that which I had planned for 30 years ago.  And yet, at its core, it is a lot of what I wanted all along – a life filled with love.

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I will always remain a huge planner.  HUGE.  But now I am better at letting God direct my steps.  I accept with gratitude, all that has happened over these last 30 years, for with it comes understanding and acceptance.  The years have been filled with twice as much love as I might otherwise have known.  God’s blessings have brought me two husbands to love for eternity, twice as many children as I might have otherwise loved, and more experiences than I would have ever imagined, had my life gone only as I had planned.  

So today I celebrate and recognize the overflowing love that spans these last 30 years as a great gift.  If it is God’s will, I wish for the next 30 years to be equally blessed.  This life of mine has not gone quite as planned, but someday, when I might be granted eternal rest in God’s embrace, I will simply say “Thank you so much for a life richly-filled with so much love.”  

~~~

Dear heavenly Father, please continue to bless us, just as you always have, through the challenges and the successes.  Watch over my loved ones here on earth and keep our hearts close to loved ones that are no longer here with us.  Continue to guide our steps, and allow our plans to be in step with yours all along the way until your desires for us are fully realized, and we are able to spend eternal peace by Your side.

“So many believe that it is love that grows, but it is the knowing that grows and love simply expands to contain it.”

  Wm. Paul Young, The Shack

Safe travels, and always strive to seek and grow in love.