“When I first met my husband, he told me he was a single father to 2 handsome boys. Their mother got remarried and moved with them 4 hours away to another state. But, they made coparenting work. And together, us 4 parents became friends. We adopted two babies only 4 months apart last year. But every other Friday I leave from work to meet their mom 100 miles away. ‘Do you want to come stay with the boys while we go out of town, so they don’t miss school?’ Of course we said yes.”
“When my husband and I sat down with our pastor for our first session of pre-marital counseling, my mind was a flurry of white noise, punctuated by red-hot panic. The one thing I do remember our pastor saying was, ‘The best marriages happen when both people think they married up.’ Damn, was he right.”
“Grief and gratitude can sit at the same table.”
“My little boy was knocked off his feet by a bigger kid during a soccer game. My hands were clinched on the sidelines as I watched him limp toward the goal. I watched and I watched, and I waited. And he never even looked for me. He fell hard. And he didn’t even look for me.”
“‘I don’t love you. I never did. These past 7 years I’ve just been playing house with you and the kids.’ My husband scoffed these words to me after I found a video email from his married girlfriend confirming my worst nightmare. I was trembling uncontrollably. Later I sat on an old road listening to the helicopter above us trying to locate John while we passed my cell phone back and forth begging him to put down the gun. Just before 9 p.m., John asked for the phone to be handed back to me.”
“When I get frustrated with my husband, I want to be left alone, but he wanted to talk. Talk?! Are you kidding me? Ryan expressed his frustration with me as we sat in the hot tub. I wasn’t caught off guard, I knew it was coming.”
“I laugh at what a good husband is to me now, after three kids, a mortgage, and nonstop chaos. You wouldn’t find any of these ‘traits’ on a dating profile. But they will matter eventually. Trust me.”
‘Mom, what’s wrong with my uncle?’ He moved on to trying new, stronger drugs. My twin brother died that day.”
“Tonight, I walked into the bedroom and saw his black work bag half-packed on the floor. We railroad wives play the waiting game. It’s going out to eat and knowing your husband is half there while he checks his phone to see whether he’ll be able to enjoy a meal or only a half. It’s him glaring at me sleeping under warm covers while he puts on his big coat and yellow vest at 3 a.m. Most days, my husband comes in, heads straight to the shower, and falls asleep on the couch in dirty jeans.”
“It was 4:55 pm. ‘I’m going upstairs to wait for her call,’ I told my family. I walked into my bedroom and flopped on my bed. My fears got the best of me. I couldn’t handle another heartbreak. There is no way we’d be chosen. How could we? We are older, we have 3 children. They wanted to help a childless couple. I laid in the fetal position in my bed, rocking back and forth, feeling nauseous. The phone rang. Was I hearing this correctly?”
