The Stumbling Stepmom

Where were we? Oh yes, I remember….I started falling for my husband and he started dating his ex-wife. Who could forget something like that? Only slightly kidding. I have always had a rule when it comes to dating. Call me old-fashioned but if I am interested in someone and they become involved with someone else, then my interest is done. I turn it off. I am not saying it is an easy thing to do but that has always been my rule. So when my husband started dating his ex-wife, I shut down all the feelings that were starting to develop and instead just enjoyed being friends with him. So the game nights, random adventures, Sunday dinners at his aunt’s house, fun snow days, and long talks about anything and everything continued over the next year-ish. We became a tight group of friends/cousins. As my husband and his ex-wife got engaged and began to plan their wedding we were there to help with the details, give ideas and moral support. That’s what friends are for, right? The wedding happened in the summer of 1999. It was a beautiful wedding and as one of my husband’s best friends, I was happy to help out and even helped serve cake at the reception. I won’t deny that I had twinges over his marriage, but I was happy for him too and sent him off on his honeymoon with all the best wishes and excitement for his new life.

You would think that would be the end of his and my story. And I thought it was. He was married and life was moving on for me as well. My mom got really sick that same summer so I spent a lot of time with my family in Arizona. My sister and a good friend moved up to be my roommates that same fall and I started a new job. I was attending a YSA (young single adult) ward and I started being open to dating options again. Before my husband got married, I was hanging out so much with all of them that I didn’t even think to date. Now it was time to get back into that world. And I did. It was a lot of fun and a good distraction.

Over the next 20 years, yes 20 years, I worked for the University of Utah Hospital, got to travel around the U.S. and Canada working for a pipeline integrity company, went on a couple of cruises with friends, moved to WA state to housesit in a lake town on a beautiful apple orchard, went to Australia just for fun, dated all kinds of interesting and crazy people (boy do I have stories from my dating life!), and moved to Virginia without a job and only having visited there once, just because I wanted and needed a new adventure in life.

I kept tabs on my husband and his life during this time through his cousin, a great friend of mine. He had a busy life with work that moved him all over the place and growing his family with five boys. I liked being able to know how he was doing but still keeping my old-fashioned values of being respectful of his marriage and staying out of the picture.

Then in 2019, my husband reached out. I won’t lie, my heart jumped with happiness when I saw his message. It had been so long! We only messaged back and forth but we caught up on each other’s lives. Sadly he let me know that his marriage was ending. I was glad I could be a support and a shoulder for him. We continued to message and I continued my life. I moved to North Carolina at the end of that summer, just in time to experience my first hurricane, hurricane Florence, and go back to school to start a new career as a medical assistant. I had no plans to move back to the West Coast, let alone Utah. I loved living back East and planned to find a job and continue life back there after I graduated. But Heavenly Father had other plans.