A blog was posted in a group about a woman who had a successful career when she first married, and left the work world to stay home with her special needs children. She devoted her life to her children and didn’t keep up with her skills. Then she and her husband split up and she was left to start over by herself.
She was beating herself up for not having kept up her skills. She felt that her marriage could have been saved if she hadn’t switched to devoting her life to her family when she’d initially married him as a driven career woman. To hear her tell it, it sounded like she thought she’d baited-and-switched him.
I took the road this woman did not travel. I raised my children and built a successful business. It did not save my marriage.
Something else saves marriages… something I’m yet to discover. But beating yourself up over whether you built a career alongside raising children or devoted all your time to your children is not the answer, imo.
The woman did what she had to do and knew to do in the moment. We women tend to beat ourselves up with “if onlys.” If only I hadn’t married that guy so fast, if only I had kept my career (or left my career) my marriage, life or children’s lives would be different.
I think we’d all be better off if we trusted our own individual path. I know I’ve been guilty about making sweeping generalizations about what works and what doesn’t. What works for me (or would have worked for me) might not work for you… and vice versa. There are WAY too many variables and personalities to ever know what caused what.
I’m an observer and I love observing patterns in life and humanity. The pattern I’m observing lately is that we’d all be better off trusting that we did the best we could where we were.
Release it all. Release our own “mistakes” and other people’s “mistakes,” Forgive ourselves and others. Get as close to God as we can, work on that connection and trust that today is a new day. Jesus Christ can resurrect the hope and happiness in our lives.
Jesus is our releasing power.
Jesus is our forgiving power.
Jesus is our healing power.
Jesus is our resurrection power.
Let Him do His work. It’s the only lasting peace I’ve ever found.
