I got a divorce this week.
Thank goodness, no.
Not my husband and I. I think he would agree that were going pretty darned strong as we cross into our third year of marriage.
Still, I got a divorce. A friend of mine let me know she and her husband made their split official.
Signed the papers. Done. Over.
And so I mean I got a divorce, Dear Reader, in the way I know you have, too. In that divorce doesn’t just happen to the two people ending their marriage. It happens to everyone in the couple’s world.
Everyone who loves them. And I do love this couple.
I can’t and won’t lie.
I wouldn’t say that about all my friends’ husbands.
You know how “The Friend’s Husband Standard” goes — he makes her happy and I get my own time with her. That’s about all I ask.
But every once in a while a friend hits it out of the park.
Such was this case. This was a husband I liked.
I liked them together. I like them individually. And I loved their story.
When we gathered seven years ago to celebrate their marriage, there was such a joyous sense of “Of course! That’s why it had taken these two so long to find love, because they were destined for each other all along.” There was a sense of “love stories do come true,” long before I could see my own unfolding.
In fact, I joked that the toaster that still sits on my kitchen counter was my first wedding present.
This couple received two identical toasters as wedding presents, so I bought one off of them.
Boom. My first wedding present.
Just like I don’t know exactly what happens inside my fancy toaster, none of us really knows what’s really cooking in someone else’s relationship.
So, perhaps, this divorce is for the best. It’s not for me to say.
What is for me to say is the divorce is not theirs alone. No divorce is.
Not if there are kids, which, it turns out in this case, there are not.
Not if you liked the guy, in addition to liking the woman. Not if you liked them together.
You don’t get to ask me to love your person and then expect me to unlove them just because you guys can’t make the marriage thing work.
I share this divorce news with you, Dear Reader, because I know you’ve gotten one, too. You’ve felt the loss.
Maybe the loss of your son-in-law who you like better than your own daughter. Maybe the loss of a good friend. Maybe just the loss of what was a good love story.
What to do with that?
I’m choosing to celebrate the love that was.
Maybe it wasn’t meant to be here forever. But it was here once.
I’m holding onto that as hope that my friend can find that again. That they both can. I’ll let go of their marriage.
But I won’t let go of love for both of them. I won’t let go of hope.
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