This was the most wonderful day in my life.  I got to marry the man that I loved with all my heart.  We had been living together for three years previous because Jim's divorce was taking so long to be finalized.  Jim's divorce was finalized and he walked directly across hall and got a license to marry me and three days later we were married.  The pastor of the church that we attended would not preform our ceremony because he had already passed judgment on us for being two divorced people and we were living in sin according to him.  Needless to say, this was the end of our relationship with that pastor and that church. We found another pastor and church that was willing to marry us and we gathered family members and friends and professed our love for one another.  After the church ceremony, we all joined together at a local restaurant and had a wonderful dinner and celebration.  We went on a three week honeymoon traveling in our trailer all over the state of Michigan spending a lot of time in the UP.  The years that followed were filled with good times and bad times that we managed to survive.  We had a large blended family with Jim's 5 children and my 2 children.  We both had our jobs to deal with and making a home for our families.  We traveled extensively in our travel trailer with our children and on our own.  Raising the children was the biggest challenge and the core of our disagreements.  Jim retired in 1991 and I finally gave in and retired in 1995. We traveled together and lived in our RV until 2007 and then we returned to Michigan and sold our trailer and moved back into our old home on Fielding Street that was owned by my son.  We paid rent to him and set up housekeeping again until the day that Jim left my side and departed his earthly home in 2013. I have many happy memories of our many years together that helps to sustain me as I carry on without the love of my life.  My wedding day always stands out in my memories.

This is probably the most painful story to tell and think about. We were married in 1981 and we spent 32 years trying to repair a family relationship with Jim's children as we also tried to blend my children and his children as a family.  Jim's time with his family was strained at best and he faced his demons and his past mistakes and began to move forward.  He had a difficult time making his amends to his children, but he worked very hard at it and he did the best he could.  He took responsibility for his part in past mistakes.  He felt he had done all he could to repair his ties with his children and he had to let it go.  The children in turn wasn't able to forgive as he had hoped but he did his part and moved on.  He felt that in time they would see the changes he had made in his life and realize that he was a changed man and they might put the past in the past.  He was not the same man that they knew when they were growing up.  They never really gave him a chance to show them who he really was.  At his funeral, one of them related to me that his was not a man that they ever knew.  Jim was loved and respected by so many people. He never stopped loving his children and he never stopped believing that eventually they would think different of him.  He perservered and just kept loving them, never speaking a bad word about them ever.  I in turn did not do so well as I constantly reminded him of the nastiness that they seemed to put on him.  He would just patiently dismiss my attitude as he knew that I loved them and that the mending would come in God's time and not my time.  We tried so hard in our relationship to mend the family ties and bring the family together and guess what? We were never really able to conquer that feat.  To this day, there is much strain in that family dynamic, but I realize it is not my circus and not my monkeys.  The pain in that family came long before Jim and I were together and I cannot let that pain dominate my life today.  It's not my pain to fix.  I continue to pray for Jim's children and I continue to love them and the rest is up to the God of my understanding.  I just know that Jim's children have a lot to reckon with and it's not my job to heal them.  God Bless this broken family!