This month. Right around this time, a year ago, I found myself in a very dark place.  In September 2012 my husband of almost five years asked me for a divorce.  Honestly, my world shattered.  I was immediately overwhelmed with a million questions.  Why me?  What did I do so wrong?  How could I be so unlovable? Was I really that horrible of a person that my own husband wanted nothing to do with me? What am I going to do?

For weeks, that added up to months, I walked around feeling like I had been punched in the stomach.  My mind was so clouded with anger, hate, and resentment, to name a few, that I couldn’t even think straight.  I was so deeply hurt.  At that moment I just knew that I would never be able to put back together the pieces of my broken heart.  Each night I would lay awake staring at the ceiling, with tears rolling down my face, thinking about my son.  Wondering what I would tell him, wondering if he even understood what was going on.  Aside from God’s true grace, he was the one thing that kept me going.

It’s been one year now.  In this past year I have learned so much about love, life, myself, and the resiliency of my heart.  I am in a much much better place now.  Things are not always easy and sometimes they even suck a little bit but I am learning to take it all as a lesson.  It’s taken me a very long time to understand that all I really need to do is to trust God.

I’ve been doing a lot of soul-searching these past several months and I’ve really had some clarity.  I’m ready to be a different person.  I’m ready to be the person that I have always wanted to be.  Over the years I taught myself to blame others, to blame situations, to blame God, for my life being in the shape that it has been.  But I’m realizing now that the only one responsible for me is me.  I stupidly assigned others the responsibility of making me happy.  Every time that I did someone or something let me down.  The burden laid on them.  It was their fault I was heartbroken, unhappy, angry, sad, or even happy.  I shouldered none of the responsibility.

What a horrible way to live.  No wonder I was so unhappy.  I know I don’t want to be this person anymore.  I don’t want to be this example to my son and I certainly don’t want to cast this burden on to someone else.

My prayer is that God begin to mold and shape my heart in such a way that my true happiness will be found in Him.  That I will take hold of my life and hold only myself responsible for the things that I do or don’t do.  I pray that I be the best example to my son and that one day he look back on his life and know that I did everything I knew to do to show him how much I love him.  And I pray that one day I will be able look back on my own life and know that I was the best woman, mom, wife, sister, daughter, and person that I could be.

Perhaps even one day I will sit down with my ex-husband, the father of my son, and apologize for making him carry the heavy load of being my happiness.