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I myself am lost on this drive called life. Do I turn right or left? Or do I have to make a U-turn? Am I going north or south? Or am I already where I need to be? You see I am the person who can listen to your story and tell you exactly what comes next and what you’re going to do. I can tell you exactly how you’re going to react and how you need to handle the situation. I can tell you if you need to turn left or right, or if you’re making a U-turn. I can tell you if you’re going north or south or if you’re already where you need to be. However, on my own drive through life, I am completely at loss.
Why? That is what you want to know, isn’t it? What if I said I don’t know why, because that really is the truth. I sometimes question myself. Why don’t I know where I’m supposed to go? How, if I can help everyone around me, can I not help myself? These are the question I’ve been struggling with for years.
I know the root of the cause. I know what caused me to swerve off this road I’m on and into the ditch. My mom and dad, my parents, my mentors, my heros, my saviors. Why did they do this to me? Why did they cause me to become so lost? I just want to reach my destination. I just want to reach a place where I can, at least rest for a while until I figure out which way I’m supposed to turn.
A lot of people ask me what bothers me the most and I never know how to answer them except to say everything. Let me give you an example. I was in the grocery store the other day with my mom. She left me in line with the cart and went to get something she forgot to pick up. As I stood in line and watched all these strangers go by me, this one family grabbed my full attention. There was a mom and a dad and their three kids. Now why, you ask, did I care what this strange family was doing? My answer to you is that I didn’t. I didn’t care how they were going to spend the rest of their day, or what they were buying, or where they happened to be going on vacation that week. I cared about how the family was communicating and functioning together. I cared when I watched the dad tell his middle and oldest child to go pick something out from the candy isle. I cared when the kids ran off together, happy they were allowed to get a special treat. I cared when I watched the mom and dad stand in line with their cart full of food next to me, waiting for their kids to come back. As I watched all this, the dad and his kids, the family, grocery shopping together, the happy faces these people were wearing, a knot came into my throat. I tried to look away, I tried not to care, because at the beginning I didn’t, but then I realized I did. I cared the whole time. Well then why did you care? That’s the question that was running through my mind. I cared because that video that is now stored in my mind of the family in the grocery store, used to be us. It used to be how my family functioned with each other. It used to be the way every Sunday morning was spent. And now, here I am standing in the grocery store with my cart thinking and yearning for one more Sunday grocery trip. Just one more, and then I find myself doing something else. Quickly sucking myself out of what I want and slipping into prayer for these children. Praying like a madwomen that this family never gets torn apart, that this family never has a problem to big they can’t handle, praying that these three little children that I don’t even know, will go through life experiencing a happy family, a happy childhood and never, ever have to hear the word DIVORCE used in their house. Because let me tell you, when your family breaks apart into tiny little pieces, no matter how old the children or child is, it’s going to create a hard, torturing, nightmare for them. Sometimes divorce is the only way and sometimes it is the better route, but if there’s a chance, if there’s a 1% chance that you might be able to work through whatever maybe going on in your marriage, please don’t give up. For your children’s sake, give it one more shot.