A New Day

Today, I wake up this morning as a single woman.  For me, it is a new chapter of a wondeful life I have shared with many people.  Being a single woman sounds to adventurous, but being called a divorced woman sounds depressing so, I will just stick with I am a mom.  A mom who has 4 wonderful daughters and a fantastic son in law.  A mom who has made good choices and bad, has cried and laughed and yelled and cheered with and at my kids.  A mom who has made a decision that will disrupt my childrens lives, that will force us to reconstruct what "our family" is. 
Choosing to get a divorce was the hardest decision I have ever had to make.  It was a very long process.  Many people are shocked, but the people who are the closest to me know this was a very very very long process.  Hours of marriage counseling, counseling one on one, tears with loved ones, tears with my exhusband, and many hours on my knees asking, digging really deep, pleading with my Heavenly Father to please help me make a good choice. Many hours sitting inside the temple, going over and over in my mind the covenants I have made, thinking of "Families are Forever".  Could this really be the right choice???
I am 99% sure it is.  The only 1% left that I am not, is when I find a letter in my 7 years old daughters backpack from school that has a drawing of me and Ammon with a heart in between and she has written "dear dad, I hope you get back to mom, I love you".  That is when the tears start to flow, and I take my little 7 year old in my arms and I tell her me and her dad cannot be married but we will always  love her, and we will just be a different kind of family.  She then hugs me and says "yeah, you guys did fight alot" and then she goes off to find her 11 year old sister to torture.
The choice is heavy that I carry and the consequences are real and big, but I pray for understanding, for compassion, and for forgiveness to the people I have disapointed, the people I have hurt, the people who did not know and are shocked.  We never know what goes on in others homes when the doors are closed and blinds are drawn,  we just hope all is well, and when it is not, we show up with freshly baked cookies and a smile on our face, and a look, that look that you know when someone really cares.