New Life

Well, things have settled down for me, inside my head and in my immediately family life.  (Why do other people always appear so stable?  ...  I guess I appear pretty stable, too, at a glance.  Huh.)  Things are neither new nor old, wonderful nor terrible, easy nor hard.  Things are just as they are.

I have been on an interesting emotional journey since declaring that I was taking a break from the Mormon church.  Things have happened that I did not anticipate (like a complete paradigm shift - that was out of the blue), and many things have happened that I did anticipate, but whether I anticipated them or not, it doesn't change the fact that this road has been challenging.  And I say challenging in the way that a mom would say it about her troubled child who she doesn't want to bag on.  Still, as a person who is fascinated by life, the journey has been interesting.  I've learned a lot about myself and about my loved ones and friends.

I've found that a lot of what I want to address with this topic isn't about religion at all.  It's about surviving life.  It's about loss and dealing with that loss.  Loss of friends, of community, of an identity.  I find myself trying to navigate patience, openness, parenting, marriage, and life with no road maps.  The road maps we've always had were clearly labeled Mormon and now, ... now we're just winging it.  I don't find this scary, but I do find it different and hard to figure out at first.  I've wanted to talk about language and the inadequacy of my Mormon words to explain my new feelings and understandings.  I've wanted to talk about power imbalance in relationships.  I've wanted to talk about finding a healthy path.  Those are the things that have directly impacted my life.

This journey is no triumph.  It's not what I intended or wanted to do.  It's just what happened.  For months Rob said, "This isn't what I wanted," and I would counter with, "It's not what *I* wanted!"

But the months of confusion have largely passed.  Now this is our life.  I'm not sure what tomorrow looks like, and I'm not sure where I'm headed, but I know things are going to turn out pretty good.  Cause that's what me and tomorrow have for each other:  goodness.  

And I have to say, that's not a bad life.