Two Roses

This is a curiously difficult post to write. I haven't spoken much about the personal side of my divorce on this blog, generally because I haven't felt it's been necessary. Something happened today that I feel a prompting to blog, and I'm still not entirely sure why.

Yesterday I drove to another town to pick up my Nanna for Christmas, and as my mind was wandering, I was thinking about the kid's aunties and uncles and cousins coming to visit their family for Christmas. I was thinking about how it's been a long time since I've seen the kid's aunties (their dad's sisters), and that I miss them terribly. There are cousins that would have been my nieces and nephews if their dad and I hadn't separated, and I've not met these kids who are such a part of my kids' lives. I cried, remembering how Christmas used to be with my former husband and his 4 siblings and their various partners and children, and grieved again for the life that once was, but is no more.

Today I picked the kids up for our family Christmas with my mum and step-dad, my dad, my Nanna and my sister, and we had a lovely pre-Christmas lunch. AFter lunch, I took the kids to their (paternal) grandparents to drop them off, and got chatting to my former in-laws about Christmas and various arrangements. My former FIL disappeared for a minute, and came back with two roses for me. He told me he knows how much I like them, and that they're nothing really, to which I responded that they were beautiful and certainly not nothing. He took my hand and gave me a kiss, and wished me a Merry Christmas. He then told me he still loves me, and his voice broke as he told me he always has and he retreated hastily into the house. I struggled not to burst into tears then and there, and exchanged Christmas greetings with my former MIL as I breathed to keep my composure. Which I quickly lost as I got back into the car to leave.

My FIL took our separation quite hard, it was a couple of years before he could really talk to me again, and our relationship has been slowly rebuilding ever since. This man loved me like his daughter, took great joy in his son's family and was a big part of my life. When I left my husband, I didn't just leave one man, I left his parents and siblings and their families, as well. And I miss them all. So. Much. I still grieve that they're not part of my family anymore, not a part of the life I dreamed of. It certainly wasn't a fairytale family, we all had our ups and downs, but they adopted me as one of their own and I loved them dearly. I couldn't wait to be an aunty (we were the first ones to have kids), to see this family grow and love and enjoy each other.

We often forget that divorce doesn't just affect the husband and wife and kids involved. There are others, others who love us that we sometimes leave behind. Sometimes for just a season, sometimes forever. The journey I've been on over the last nearly 4 years is not one I had anticipated would happen in my life, and it's been an unpredictable ride. I've prayed for restoration of the relationships that were fairly suddenly broken, and God has certainly been doing His work in the kid's dad and I this year, for which I am so grateful. I see His hand in the rebuilding of relationships between other family members, and I give thanks that these relationships are so much better for the kids than how it's been in the past.

Two roses showed me today what love can be. People who love us can be hurt, wounded and grieved, but as His word tells us, 'Love is patient, love is kind.....it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails...'. This verse was read at our wedding, and I know now I didn't really understand it then as I do now. I looked at it with romantic blinkers on, quite unable to grasp the enormity of what this scripture means. The two roses my former FIL gave me today showed me what love is: 'And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love'. I believe love can change, the love we feel for people can change with time and circumstance, but God tells us that it remains, it never fails, therefore it never dies. I know how corny that sounds, but it's true, and I don't think I fully understood that until today.

I debated about whether or not to post this because of it's personal nature, and then I remembered something I read once, that God allows us to go through trials not just for our own experience and growth, but so that we can help others that have similar experiences 'As we are comforted by God in affliction, so we are better able to comfort others (2 Cor. 1:4)'. He allows these things to happen in my life to show His good and His glory, regardless of how much of a struggle it appears at the time. I pray He uses this experience of mine to speak to someone's heart, to show His love for us, the love He wants us to have for each other.

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

(1 John 4:7-12)