Finding Me

                  I really thought I was going to live the rest of my life the way it was planned. I never really saw it coming. Oh, I knew it was there. I could feel it. I could sense it. But I thought I could control it. I thought I could put on my rose-colored glasses and see the best in the situation and that, somehow, doing that would make it ok. I never really thought it would end or at least end like this.
                 I got bored writing this blog that I had dabbled with for a few years. I felt like I had nothing left to say, nothing left to contribute. Taking pictures of my home in various decorating stages wasn't me. I enjoyed looking at everyone else's but that wasn't what I wanted from this blog yet didn't know what it was I did want. Sharing recipes was fine sometimes but it wasn't what I really wanted from this. It was sort of a metaphor for my life. I knew what I had wasn't what I wanted but I was content to live with how things were because I didn't have the courage to change them myself. And it wasn't unbearable. I mean, by many accounts, it was quite blessed. Two healthy, amazing daughters, a beautiful home and family nearby and I got to be a homemaker. We live in the small town I grew up in. He worked hard for a living and was a good provider. But something major was missing.
                I gave away me in this process of becoming 'us'. He wanted me to. I assumed his identity as I faded into the background. He was no more at fault of me allowing this than I was. There were many other, more personal issues that led to where I find myself today but what I choose to share with you is this new journey I am on of self-discovery. He has been gone one month. I begged him to stay. Cried for him to stay. Begged God to make him stay. But he was set on leaving.
                And now. Now I must know why. What was my part in all of this? Who am I exactly? Who am I as an adult? As a mom in charge of her home? I identify (like a lot of women probably do) with characters in movies and music. When he first left I couldn't get the Sandra Bullock movie Hope Floats out of my head. No, he didn't cheat on me. But I was once a small town beauty queen who was once audacious and "something". I now live in the small town I was all of those things in. I am starting over in the same town that knew and loved me and my popular husband. I do wonder how, on God's green earth, am I supposed to make something of myself here. But, praise God, my Mama doesn't stuff road kill! And I'm just waiting for my Harry Connick Jr.
                I've been changing silly things around our home that were "him". I got a new ATM card because the last one I had had military stuff all over it (he retired after 20 years in the USMC). I removed the plaque that he had put up on a corner of the outside of the house. I've got new license plates coming to replace my current purple heart plates on my car. My garage walls have never looked so bare as I removed all of his military and movie posters. Some parts of the inside of the house are bare as I removed all of the military stuff for him to take. I have nothing to put in its' place. No girly, woman-stuff posters to put up in the garage, no "I'm a Christian and a Mom" license plate to put on my car. I wouldn't even know what stuff says "me".
                Just like in the movie Runaway Bride I don't know what I like, who I am. How I like my eggs. What are my dreams, aspirations and desires? No clue. But I'm going to find out. I'm on a self-discovery voyage.  I will find out as I walk upright with the Lord. I loved being married, being part of a partnership. I will want that again. But before I do I need to find me and not give her away again in pursuit of the us.