Picking Up The Broken Pieces

I cannot tell you enough how this move is so welcome in our family. I cannot tell you how I know that life in Indiana is going to be good for us - I just know. And I cannot tell you specifically why life here was so bad and hard for these last two years. It just was.

Now that we are coming through the other side of such a dark period of our lives I feel I can finally talk about how bad it really was. I can tell you that our family fell apart and we broke into countless little pieces. That instead of standing strong we cracked one at a time, and broke away to deal with our own misery by ourselves. That the kids and I were all drowning in our own pools of brokenness that did not allow us to reach out and help the other.

These last two years were harder on us than the first couple of years of Sarah's disease because at least then we fell apart together. But here? We fell apart alone.

 Until that ray of light opened up the gray skies and shined down upon us I couldn't see just how bad things were. Until the Indiana opportunity was more than just an opportunity, but rather a reality I was more in the dark on the kids situations than I ever realized.

The guilt I feel for not seeing what they needed me to see is horrendous. It is an awful feeling to know that I am co-captain of this family and captain of our home life, and I could not see my shipmates were drowning too.

Don't get me wrong. I had glimpses here and there, and I did the best I could with the resources and the parenting capacity that I had at the time situations arose. But the things that I thought I was fixing I was just putting a band aid on. The wounds were still there.

And now I see. I see all the damage of two years worth of falling apart. I see two years of loneliness and two years of pain. I see two years of hardship that has worn us all down as only twenty year of time can.

But God didn't make me the co-captain of this family for nothing. And he didn't provide me with strong female role models for nothing. And he didn't make me stubborn and strong-willed for nothing. And didn't make me unique and unusual and an outside-of-the-box thinker for nothing. He didn't make me a fighter for nothing.

Now I will use all of those skills to pick up the pieces of my broken family. And I will piece us back together one bit at a time. It will take time for sure. But it can be done.

I feel my strength returning to me. I feel ready to fight.

I am so deeply thankful that God moved us out of here just in time. I am thankful that the right opportunity presented itself and the right people helped us out.

I know we will make it through this.

Life going forward might look a bit different. Living here has left its mark on all of us. But I know that my favorite things in life aren't the perfect looking ones. They are the things that are a bit banged up and imperfect - which makes them all the more beautiful and right.

So, here's to moving forward. Here's to new beginnings and a new life. I am so excited to share our journey with you again. I am so excited to feel joy and happiness again. I am excited for my children to bloom again.

Picking up the broken pieces and putting us back together will not be easy. But I cannot think of a more important job.