Joy

I'm grateful for the atonement. I'm grateful for joy. I'm grateful that I can choose joy. I choose joy by choosing to live in harmony with the plan of happiness. I don't have to choose this. This is the magic part. It's magic because when I choose joy my joy is greater BECAUSE I choose it. I LOVE that!

Brazil for Christmas

To most people it will seem that I just got back from Brazil.

I did not get close to enough of it when I was there in October. I have had a concern about what to do for Christmas. I have not considered Brazil because Delta® doesn't fly to Recifé until December 21st. I thought for certain that I would not be able to afford a Skymiles® seat on Delta's maiden voyage to Recifé. I looked it up last week, and I COULD afford it. I booked the tickets and I will be with the girl I love for Christmas!

I am so excited!

A Hero

My divorce was a horrible thing. It was worse than a death. I can describe it as a horrible death that happened over and over and over again. Sometimes we experienced the same death over and over again in the same day.

Many days I suffered these deaths all on my own. I have never felt more forgotten by my Heavenly Father. I had never felt more alone.

It was sad and the whole thing had sucked donkeys! (This phrase was borrowed from early 90's SNL skit.)

Kat and I both made many mistakes. Many couples make the same mistakes. At the worst of the times in my marriage I would look around and think to myself.  'Whew... We are better off than most people.'

When I found out that my marriage was over it was a shock. I was very surprised. I never thought it would happen to me. It made me angry.

Kathleen did not want to work on our marriage and that made me sad. She did start to develop a vision of our future that took me a long time to buy into but ultimately I started to see that vision also.

Kat had this idea that she and I could keep our friendship for the kids' sake. Her vision was that for the kids we could remain divorced and still respect and help each other.

My divorce was the easiest and cheapest ones that I have ever heard of. We didn't use lawyers and we carefully drew up our own papers keeping each others needs and feeling at the forefront. There was still fear from both of us that the other may want to treat us unfairly. Ultimately we made things very fair for both.

Every once in awhile egos will get hurt and those harsh feelings got uncovered. Now these pains are quickly eliminated. That ego (that little me) is quickly reminded that it is not in charge that it does not control us, and our true spirits take over to heal and point us in the right direction again.

Finally I feel comfortable that I am going to be okay. I have found a girl to date that is wonderful. As much as I love Cynthia I also have this knowledge that I will be fine with or without her. This makes it so that there is not a pressure to be someone that I am not. This knowledge allows me to be genuine. My future marriage will be much better for this.

I see that I am a much better person since my divorce. Things that I have learned rarely get learned by people. I had enormous motivation to learn these things and learn them quickly. I would not have learned these things as clearly as I did without Kathleen's patient feedback.

It hasn't been easy for either of us to make these changes in our lives. We have had to take a hard close look at our insecurities and shortcomings and had to figure out how to make these things strengths.

Kat and I have become a team again where it comes to our kids. We are patient with each other and we support each other in discipline and goals.

Thanks to Kathleen's vision we have maintained our friendship. We have both moved on and left pettiness and egos behind. If she hadn't had this vision and shared this vision with me it would have been easy to just keep our relationship to a contractual level. It would have been very difficult for our kids. It would have been easy to be vindictive and petty. 

Kathleen has been a hero in our divorce. She hasn't always made the choices I agreed with, but she gave me a vision for a future that put our children first and made it so that we could both be happy and enjoy our lives.

My future doesn't include Kathleen as the most important person in my life. I am excited for that role to be filled by another. I will be forever grateful to Kathleen for being so cooperative in our divorce. I am also grateful to her for showing me a vision where our we can put our children first and make things as good as possible for them.

Thanks Kat!