May 19th, 2023
I want to say something to anyone out there who is jaded by difficult relationships, divorce, or just waiting so long to find “the One”.
Don’t give up. It’s out there, especially when God directs your steps. I’ve said that Scott was my fairytale from the day, yes, literally the day I met him. His sweet spirit was looking for mine while I had given up on looking. When we met, there was an electrical, spiritual connection that we couldn’t deny.
Oh we fussed and argued sometimes, mostly over things that are so trivial now; we’re humans and so emotions and stress and even hormones get in the way (TMI trigger warning: menopause is a beast). But he held on to me when I was in chaos and I held onto him when he was.
He told me to retire from nursing in February of 2021; I did so in April. There were a few reasons for this. The first was that he knew I had suffered through burnout for many years (nursing is not for the faint of heart) and that it wasn’t getting any better. He hated seeing me struggle as much as I was. Scott was on top of the world nursing at Jackson South in Miami so me crying over work every night broke his heart.
The second, a reason I loved with all my heart, was to have more time to spend with me. Scott was travel nursing and when I was working I had to rush down to Miami for a weekend or else ask for time off and see if it got approved and if I could get coverage. He said “then you can come see me anytime you want to and you can stay for a whole week or two”. And that’s what I did. The memories of all of those visits to him in Miami and New Hampshire and the memories of the road trip we made home together when he finished in NH and we took a slow ride home, stopping to stay in places with great food and enjoyable attractions, this will live inside me forever.
The third reason was this: I asked Scott when he said “just retire, we’ll be fine without your paycheck”. I asked, “but who will I be then? What is my purpose going to be?” My last baby was going to be graduating soon and, although I’m still a mom, I knew it soon would not be the same. And I loved being Scott’s wife so much but I feared I would feel useless and without direction. He said, in an almost prophetic way, honey, one day we’re going to have grandchildren. You always said that you wished you could have stayed home with the boys. Now you can be a stay-at-home grandma and it will save the kids tons of money in daycare so you’ll be helping them, too. (This was just over a year before we ever knew that Lillian Reese was coming into our lives). And so I agreed. I’m so very glad I did. Because if I had kept working we would have had more money…but I wouldn’t trade the last two years (or the last ten) for anything in the world, certainly not for money.
A love like that, so selfless and pure, I never believed existed. He wanted to take care of me. He wanted me to be happy. He was really enjoying travel nursing (especially in Miami) but he knew I was floundering so he came up with a solution. He stayed with me during one of the toughest battles of my life before that and then saved me from other tough ones. Because of who he was, I’ll never doubt that, every day since we met, he loved me with every beat of his heart. True love, fairytale love, unimaginable love does exist. I felt blessed and so grateful to have it every day, even when we fussed over things. It was the forever kind and I will cherish it forever, even though our time was far too short.
So DON’T GIVE UP. Don’t settle. Don’t stop believing in the miracle. Don’t expect it to always be easy but if it’s really a gift straight from God, it will almost all of the time.
I was twitterpated (ref. Bambi) since the day I met him. That never stopped.
God is in the Outcome 