I have often heard it said that our lives, much like the pages of a book, can be divided into three parts: a beginning, a middle, and an end. Since the average life expectancy of a woman in Canada is eighty-four years of age, my life could be divided into three twenty-eight-year periods. Twenty-eight years is also the approximate length of a generation in our culture or the age at which a woman first gives birth. In my case, I gave birth to my first child, my son Will, at twenty-seven. I was living in Goose Bay, Labrador, and was working as a nurse. I was a young wife and mother with most of my life still in front of me, full of hopes and dreams for the future.
Toward the end of the middle part of my life, at the age of fifty-four, I was a retired empty nester, married to the same man for thirty-one years, but I was preparing to leave him and put my entire life behind me—suddenly and in secret. At the time, we were living in northern Ontario, where I was far away from most of my close family and friends, who lived on the east coast of Canada. It was a very frightening and lonely time for me, to say the least. I was facing the biggest crisis of my life, during which time I had to make many drastic decisions by following my gut instinct, trying to trust God, and listening to what I thought He was telling me to do.
Twelve years later, I am well into the third and final act of my life. I feel very blessed indeed that I was able to not only survive my very difficult marriage but also that I was able to get out and start over. Thankfully, there is life after divorce, but that doesn’t mean that things will always be easy. As long as we are alive, we will have many challenges to overcome, as well as life lessons to learn. I will be a lifelong student.
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