A Big Week in Texas
Jul 10th, 2008 by Jenn
I’m sitting at my mom’s dining room table, watching her squeeze in her last few hours with “her boys” (my 2 and my nephew). We have spent the past week in Texas with my dad and then my mom, and are heading home today. We have certainly never lacked for things to do this week!! Throw in my step-sister’s son a few times this week and it has been often crazy! I told my husband that when I get home, I’d like to sit in a very quiet place, alone, and perhaps with an adult beverage!
I’m ready to be back in Oklahoma, though I am not looking forward to the jump in humidity! West Texas is much drier and makes for some beautiful evenings. But this is not my home. I have lived in Oklahoma my whole life, minus a year in Casper, Wyoming when I was about 2, which I don’t remember. So how did my family get out here? My dad has worked for oil and natural gas companies his entire life which led us to being transfered to Borger, TX two weeks after my high school graduation. Five years after that (and 2 months before I was engaged), their divorce was final. Three years after that (and 2 years after I married), they both remarried within 6 months of each other. Mom moved to Amarillo with her new husband, and Dad stayed in Borger with his new wife.
These events were the toughest things I have yet to experience. Sometimes I hate admitting that since so many people have gone through much, much more than that; a parents’ divorce may have been just the tip of the iceberg for many of you. But for me, the end of my parents’ 25 years of marriage rocked my world for probably the next 10 years. It was at this time that I came to believe that we do have a spiritual enemy, and he stole my family away from me. It would have been a lot easier if my parents had not had a beautiful, caring, best-friend-kind-of-relationship, one I hoped to have in the future. So I have had to redefine the word “family” for myself over the past 12 years.
I guess one thing that helps is seeing the relationship they all have with my kids. My kids LOVE spending time with my dad and his wife (Papa and Meme) and with my mom and her husband (Nan and Grandpa Dave), and all of them adore and are so great to my children. My boys don’t know anything different. All they know is that they are loved.
And really, that is what is important. God’s grace rebuilding a broken system into something meaningful and rich. Something that I’ve really had to work through with Him - recognizing that it is not about me, but about His Love.
And that is how I have come to enjoy a week in Texas.
Pain is pain no matter what caused it. Divorce is horrible for children. I have two kids and I’ve been divorced twice. BUT, the one good thing that comes from divorce if there is any is that when the divorced couple remarry the kids get more grandparents. I never met a kid who hated grandparents.
I am so glad you guys are home!
You were missed by your man. Our family fills the house with an incredible energy when we are all together. I am so pathetic when left by myself.
I love you!
P.S. I am glad I read my comment before I clicked the button, I had made the comment, “I got down to my Santa monkey underwear! ” which as I reread that, it sounded like I was running around the house wearing nothing but my Santa monkey underwear. What I sight that would be to behold!
I was actually trying to say I had to wear my Santa monkey under because it was the only pair I had clean. The whole thing just sound weird so I dropped it.
pain is always subjective. Even the pain we feel for others.
I can appreciate so much what you wrote.
Its so very interesting to me, that as adults we still can feel so much pain in relationship to our parents divorces.
I can remember when my parents divorced I felt like somebody died.
Neither one of mine has remarried- but they have come close a few times, and it was a very strange time for all of us siblings.
I am glad that you had a good vacation and that you made it home safe.