He wins!

I am going to write today a blog that has been a long time coming. This is likely going to make you, my genteel reader, a little sick with the sappiness of it; and John, my husband and the focus of the blog, a little red behind the ears...he is so cute when he does that. I am sorry John, but this must be written. So here is your warning...

IF YOU ARE EASILY MADE SICK BY UNRESTRAINED SAPPINESS, YOU WILL WANT TO SKIP THIS POST!!!


There...you have been warned.

John and I have been married now for a little over 19 months. When I first started dating him, I really liked him, but I was just barely divorced and I worried that he might be just a rebound guy. I SO did not want him to be a rebound guy. But he was a single unburdened guy and I was a very recently divorced single mother of four. What could he possibly want with that messy situation? Luckily for me he was...

1 serious about dating me
2 very aware of the crap that goes through a persons head after a divorce
3 extremely patient
4 unwaveringly brave

I have spent a lot of time over the last year and a half or so comparing my life now to what it was before. I have come to learn that this is something that happens whether you want it to or not. John and I talk about everything and for a while, in the beginning, we even sort of made the comparison a game. We would start talking about various aspects of personalities, habits, emotions, etc. and decided who won in the various categories, the hat or John.

While I am not going to go into any serious details, I can honestly say that John wins. In every category. No matter how you break it down, no matter what angle you look at it, he wins. For me, he is perfect.

But you see it goes so much deeper than just simply "he is better than the last one". John is my perfect match. How's that for a rebound relationship huh! He is my heart and soul. Strange, how that happened, I never believed in that kind of sentiment before. I wanted to. I tried to pretend that Brent was everything I ever needed or wanted. It wasn't until I found John that I learned what that all was. In fact, I didn't even completely understand how screwed up my first marriage was until I was married to John. Don't get me wrong, I knew it was screwed up and that I was really unhappy. I wouldn't have divorced him if I wasn't feeling those things. But...it wasn't until I lived in this relationship that I have come to understand exactly how bad it was. I am still discovering things that were missing or completely wrong now, a year and a half later. And it makes me angry. I didn't hate him when I asked for the divorce. I was sad and overwhelmed by guilt, but I didn't hate him. I have come to hate him a lot over the last 19 months.

I said earlier that John was brave. Oh, this is not an overstatement. This amazing man took on a broken woman. I was seriously broken when we started dating and even the first several months of our marriage were an emotional roller coaster for him. I think in some ways I am still a little broken. I am trying to mend those parts of me, but it will take time and patients. Thankfully he has that as well. In addition to dealing with broken me, he took on 4 kids. My kids are great. But they are difficult for him in many ways. He didn't have kids before, though you could never tell. He is such a natural parent. He is a better parent than I am by a long shot. I am too bendable. I have terrible follow through and I forget that a parents job is to teach not just love. I loved my kids, but I taught them very little. They lacked some very fundamental skills that they would need later in life. He also understands that sometimes to teach, you have to let the hard lesson be learned. I have never been good at that. All my kids had to do was cry a little or look upset and I would back completely off a punishment. Like I said...I lack follow through. He isn't mean, though sometimes the kids think so. He is consistent. He tries so hard to make them understand that doing the right things the right way gets you nothing but good, and doing the wrong things is really really un-fun. He is brave, because he takes this on. He faces them unwaveringly. He listens to them rave about how great their Dad is, all the while it is John who helps them brush their teeth. It is John who gets up at the crack of dawn to get them to school. It is John who pays for dental work when Brent wouldn't. It is John who gets up with them in the middle of the night when they are sick or scared. It is John who will sit for hours and plays games with them. It is John who takes time off work to go to an important event at school. It is John who goes to every single parent teacher conference. It is John who loves them like a father should. I only hope that one day they will see and understand the difference between the man that they call Dad, and the one who really is a Dad to them. John is the bravest man I know.

I spent a great deal of my former life trying to find ways to be away from Brent. I went out with friends, to church functions, I worked late, I hung out at my parents or my sisters house. I found any excuse possible to not go home to him. Now all I want to do is be home. I have the best time with John. It doesn't matter what we do or where we go. As long as I am with him I am good. He is my best friend and really the only person I want to hang with.

I am so lucky! It is hard to accept sometimes that my life is this good. I get a little neurotic about it some days, like I am going to wake up and it will all have been in my head and I am back in my old life. Not that everything is perfect, we have our problems like everyone else. But I think it is as close to perfect as we can get. I adore this man. I adore everything about him. I love him exactly as he is and I hope to heaven that he never changes.