The Single Life Struggles

There comes a time in life when you realize (when the dust settles) that this "picture" doesn't look like what you thought it would. The disillusionment of failed marriages, the struggles of single parenting, and, well, being alone, all take you places you never thought you would go. The seedy night clubs or anonymous chat rooms are traps for the lonely and broken-hearted. That does not mean that all the places you find yourself in are bad, just not where you thought you might end up; like the mission fields of the Serengeti or Siberia. Surely the loneliness of being a single-again person can't be so bad as all that. Right? Wrong!

Having LIVED (yes I survived) through three failed marriages, I come to realize that I'm either very bad at marriage or very good at divorce and those are not necessarily mutually exclusive. I actually had a relative say that my "picker" was broke...What exactly does that mean? Do I need to consult Heloise, eMatch-Me-Up, or Madame Love & Tarot Card Reading before I choose the next casualty of "I do"?

Hmmm, so yes, this got me thinking. My "picker" is broken. Looking back over my adult life, my "picker" never was "fixed". I was the one that chose my spouses. I didn't invite God into my "pickin'" process. Now, please don't mistake me when I say that just because God wasn't allowed to put the marriage together on the front end that He should be blamed for them falling apart on the hind end. That was our fault.

As may be obvious by now, I was the girl that either 1)always had a boyfriend, 2)always sized up the next guy to see if he would be my next boyfriend, or 3) was married (to one of the above). It is true that hindsight is 20/20 and as I survey the landscape of the last 23 years of marriage (that's a combined figure), there isn't much joy that I recall from my relationships. Oh yes, we had happy times and my children, well, they ARE the joy that I see as I look back, but my marriages, not so much.

Now that we've established that all of us have broken "pickers", I invite you to join me along my journey of Singleness and what it has taken to get to the place I'm at now.