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“Here’s the thing about relationships,” the speaker said as he continued his talk. My husband and I held hands, sitting close together in a large ballroom with hundreds of other couples investing in their marriages. “You’re always moving. I don’t mean physically; I mean that you’re always drifting towards either isolation or oneness with your spouse. There’s no sitting still.”

“Hey girl, you okay in there?” I asked as I knocked on my ten-year-old daughter’s bedroom door. I turned the doorknob and found her with tears streaming down her face, wrapped in her Grammie’s floor-length fur coat that she would put on just about every time she went to her house.

The last thing I wanted to do at twenty-three years old was start over.   My life had been all planned out—I met the boy I wanted to marry when I was sixteen, we got married in college while I was finishing my degree in education, and then I got the teaching position I wanted. We bought a house, we were involved in a small group at church, and I could picture what our future kids would look like when they came into our lives in the scheduled three to five years from then.

“Alright everyone, we’re going to start off with a little get-to-know-you question. Let’s go around the circle and say what actor you’d want to play you in a movie about your life. Stephanie, you want to go first?” 

There’s one sentence I will inevitably hear after every single event either of my kids participate in, no matter how big or small: “Can we go get dessert after to celebrate?”

“But I don’t wanna change schools! I love my school!” my son Asher objected as we brought up the idea for the first time. “Why do I need to? I’ll never see my friends again!”

I know most people think they know everything when they’re young, but y’all, I REALLY thought I knew everything.

“Wait just a second…you’re telling me we have to climb up this waterfall just by holding hands with a bunch of strangers? No ropes or harnesses or anything?”