Finding What was Missing in the Second Stage

 I'm 59 years old now and have lived through many hardships and adventures in life.  In 2013 I went through a very painful divorce. Painful, not so much because of the troubled marriage that was lost, but because the children's lives were affected. But as I look at it now, it wasn't only my children's lives that were affected but all my family was affected, meaning my parents and my siblings. But it wasn't just my immediate family, it was my extended family, my former in-laws who had been my close friends for over 20 years at the time who were affected.  But it wasn't only my former in-laws, it was my community of friends and loved ones who knew us at the time who were affected. Such is the rippling effect in a community of the breaking up of family that had once been.

I kept a blog for several years and chronicled how I sought to recover from the loss that took place. I circulated that blog among my family and friends and the divorced members of my Latter-Day Saint community and received a lot of appreciative comments for what I was trying to do.  You can read my blog if you wish.  Here is the link: newlifefordaddy.blogspot.com.

The purpose of this new blog is to share the joy that has come into my life since that time and how the very things that were lost to me were restored, how I found love again with my wife, Tammy, and how both of us found each other and were able to begin to put back together all the broken pieces and build a life together.

We have a plaque that hangs above our heads in our room.  It reads, "And so together, they built a life they loved."  It's like a line from a book and I read it every time I enter our room. This is our story. We get to write the story of our lives.  We can write the stories of love and triumph over all our challenges, and with God's help, we shall succeed.