Over the past several weeks my wife and I have experienced growth…painful growth.  You see we have taken our daughter off to college, about a 7 hour drive from home…

 

She is our second (middle) child, but our only girl.  You see we are experiencing another painful growth too…our oldest son who has been attending college locally is also moving a long way away to continue his education…

 

Our home is very different today than just a few short weeks ago…it is much quieter and much cleaner!!  It is not only the loss of two kids, it is the loss of all of their friends all of the activities they were involved in…it was the loss of just seeing them in the evenings and the laughter we all shared…we feel as though something has been removed from our home and left a large hole which we must now fill…

 

Where is the happiness in all of this…Ann and I have found it is in the fact that we are facing it together, as a family.  We almost traded all of that for the lie of something better, the lie that said “We will be happier in our next relationship”.

 

This is not a post to alienate couples who are divorced; in fact, your comments posted here could carry more weight than the words we are putting here.  You see, our point is all marriages take work and we believe that satan fills our minds with this fantasy of the “Hollywood” marriage where everything is great and everyday is filled with wedded bliss…every day is just like the first day we met.

 

When I was in The Meadows for treatment of sexual addiction, the highly educated, highly trained, best in the world treatment center counselors had a technical term they used for this fantasy of wedded bliss…it was called “Poops and Farts” (a very technical term)J.  You see we go off into life thinking this person we married has not one flaw and then we find out…they do, in fact they have many flaws…and one is they poop and fart!

 

The problem is when all we can focus on is the bad…we forget any of the good and then one day some co-worker or some “friend” or someone we met on the Internet compliments us or pays attention to us and all we can think about is how terrible this person we married is…and so we trade it for this new person, the fantasy…and guess what…this new person understands me, they see all my great qualities and above all they don’t poop and fart!!  And we decide to trade away all of our problems for the “Hollywood” dream relationship…and the cycle starts again.

 

Ann and I are facing some new struggles as we begin to look to each other to fill the large void left in our home…I personally traded much of the time with our children…that time I miss so much right now…I traded it for the lies of satan and his “Hollywood Dream”.  I can’t get that time back, but the last two years have been a gift from God…a time to re-connect with the kids…a time to help them grow to the ultimate goal where they no longer need us. 

 

It is quiet now and I have my best friend in the world to go through this time of growth with, this time which will be yet another lesson that we will need to teach our kids when their time comes to let go of their children…

 

We never stop learning, but the one lesson our children know so very well is that marriage is tough, it is hard work, and you must work at it every day…in good times and in bad…but it will not be easy.

 

If you are divorced and re-married maybe you can share some of the unique struggles which this relationship has brought, like merging families and helping your children through the pain of life.  It is not all fun and games and it is time we start preparing our children for this, so that maybe we can stop the madness of divorce..

 

God bless you all, we love you and thank you for sharing your lives with us…

 

Steve and Ann