Hi friend,
When I was 21 years old I fell in love with a girl named Sara. I say girl because she was just 18 and I was barely 21. After only a month of knowing each other, we eloped causing a lot of heartbreak for my parents and surprise from pretty much everyone I knew. Oddly her friends and family weren’t surprised.
I remember vividly the awkwardness that occurred when my friend Brett showed up with two girls at my house expecting to do a surprise double date, only to then meet my new bride.
The marriage only lasted 6 months. To say I was heartbroken would be an understatement. I was all in, ready to slay dragons and conquer the world for her.
What I didn’t know was that she had left college to be with me right in the middle of her school year, walking away from a scholarship and bright future.
After only a couple of months the excitement wore off and she deeply regretted marrying me. In the end we filed for divorce at the courthouse and I, with .44 cents in my bank account, got on a greyhound bus funded by my siblings, and headed for my parent’s home in AZ.
I met some gypsies on the bus who invited me to scrape money together with them in order to fly to hawaii and live on the beach in tents. I was very close to saying yes.
The scars from that relatively short period of my life lasted well past 10 years into my future.
I’ve had problems with trust, intimacy, self-worth, communication and loyalty ever since. The ones who I’ve hurt the most from the distance I created are almost always the people who love me the most.
I’ve had my share of lost relationships due to this choice in my life, along with some extremely loyal and kind friends who I’ll cherish forever that have stuck around.
We can’t really understand how bad an experience is until we’ve lived it.
Love ones who die.
Broken trust.
Catastrophic financial losses.
Children who make permanent choices that will hurt them for their entire life.
The list could go on and on.
It will be 20 years in a couple of months since this event in my life. I imagine it was about 5 years ago that I was able to finally talk about it without a large amount of pain.
I don’t know when it was that I started to appreciate it, but it was sometime around then as well.
Why I’m grateful
There are some things about myself that I wouldn’t trade for all the gold in the world, all of which would not have happened without this experience:
- I genuinely don’t judge people because of their choices. You have no idea what they are going through and could never unless you lived it.
- I know what it is to be truly loved by someone now much better than I would have if I hadn’t gone through that.
- I’ve gained a very deep relationship and communication with God which started out of necessity and has continued as quiet gratitude.
- My children are being raised by someone who before this experience was a bit self-righteous and afterwards much more forgiving and patient.
- Most of all I appreciate having a kind loyal wife so much more now than I would have.
I’ve left the list at 5.
You will never love the thing while you live it
If you are currently suffering from an event you wish more than anything hadn’t happened, you won’t be grateful for it.
Maybe you will if you are Gandhi, but most of us will pray for deliverance or death depending on how hard it is.
I wished for a long time that she would take me back.
Then I wished that I hadn’t ever known or loved her.
Then I wished that I was stronger and didn’t need anyone to love me at all.
I was nowhere near being OK let alone grateful for it while I was living it and afterwards.
You may be able to relate.
I believe in agency and our ability to choose good or bad things for ourselves.
More importantly I believe that when we make good choices we have amazing outcomes most of the time.
The opinion I have that most don’t agree with however is that we also end up with amazing outcomes eventually from bad choices.
If we are willing to learn from them and grow, we will eventually be grateful for them.
What about things we can’t control
Some things are not our choice.
While writing this, a friend I made 18 years ago just lost his wife last night to breast cancer. She’s been fighting it for years and is now finally resting.
She was 41 and left him behind along with two children.
A few years back my niece lost her fiance in a terrible accident shortly before their wedding. It almost killed her and the pain she went through at times seemed a worse punishment than if she had been in the car with him.
There is nothing worse than watching a child in excruciating pain, with no ability to help them.
I could hardly stand to watch my brother as their family went through this ordeal and wouldn’t wish that kind of pain and suffering on even my worst enemy.
This too shall pass
I love my niece and I love my friend who lost his wife yesterday.
I know however that one day they both will be grateful for this thing they wish hadn’t happened.
Sometimes that gratitude comes quickly.
Sometimes it comes later.
And sometimes we must wait until the next life for understanding.
It will however come, and when it does you will be changed for the rest of your life.
Until next time, be patient with yourself, and others.
-Joseph