It's been a little over 3 months since I've blogged. Mostly because we have been incredibly busy but partly because I felt that I was in a strange place in my life and didn't really know what to say.
A little update: I finished my associates degree! What a weight off of my shoulders! I buried myself in school those last couple of months to make sure that everything was in order and that nothing was stopping me from finishing. Secondly, we moved! After 3 years and 2 months, we finally left the Camp Lejeune/Jacksonville area. We were blessed to receive orders to our hometown of Summerville, South Carolina. We bought a beautiful 4 bedroom home and moved our small family into it. It is absolutely perfect for us to grow into and hopefully add another little family member ;) We adopted a puppy that we named Hunter. He is part timber wolf, alaskan wolf, and about 5% husky. He's full of energy and we love him already! I'm taking summer classes at our local community college and will be attending College of Charleston in the fall. Evan turned THREE and as fun as it is, it is equally challenging! What a defiant age three is...
While we have been busy working on all of the above, my mind hasn't stopped spinning. I continued therapy in Jacksonville and made a good bit of progress. I feel as though I have finally made peace with the situation. It took some time but continue reading to see how I got there... The hardest part for me was trying to understand why. WHY? What a tricky question. I have always believed that there was a reason for everything. Call it God's will, fate, destiny, whatever... But I just could not understand why I had to watch my little boy, my whole world, suffer the way that he did. I was so caught up in being angry and hurt that I couldn't get past the "it just isn't fair" part. Childish, I know. But no matter what I said, who I talked to, I couldn't get through it.
So I decided to let it go.
And then I found myself enjoying what life had to offer me, all of the amazing changes that were coming up, and celebrating my success. It was incredible. Then one night, I started to think about it again. I looked at how well things were going now compared to how "well" they were going before the tornado. So it's time for me to be honest with myself... my life sucked. My marriage was failing horribly. We had gotten to a point where we just existed with each other rather than actually being a couple. And for a point of time, my husband even moved out of the house per my request. There was an upcoming deployment that I was actually looking forward to because I wanted time to myself. So when disaster struck, we found a common ground: Evan. No matter what our differences were, Evan was always our number one priority. We found strength in each other. Jesse was excused from his upcoming deployment in order to make Evan his number one priority. And in time instead of falling apart, we fell together. Don't get me wrong, this was no overnight achievement. It took months... and I mean months for us to find ourselves compatible again. And I'm glad we did. It's nice being happy again. Not only with myself but with him.
Now am I saying that the reason for the tornado was to save our marriage? Absolutely not. I'll probably never understand why. And at this point I don't really care anymore. It's done and over. Evan is thriving and happy and that is more than I could ever hope for.
