Every girl dreams of having her own fairy tale.  I know I did.  Maybe I was naive to believe that if you do everything right, or try to, that no matter what, you can have a fairy tale ending or as they say, a "Happily Ever After"!  It wasn't until recently that I realized that every fairy tale I have ever loved since I was a little girl had a villain.  What ever circumstance the princess or fair maiden had, there was opposition in every story.  So that is where I begin mine...

I am a 40 year old LDS woman, no college education (put my husband through),  mother of 3 beautiful children ages 16, 13 and 9, who is starting a new "fairy tale".  After 18 years of marriage I begin re-writing a new story, today, my first day of being divorced.  

As I woke up yesterday morning anticipating my court appearance, I was surprised by my feelings and demeanor.  I had been separated for a year so this was the last technicality that needed to be done.  I was so surprised at how calm I was.  So many times in situations like this you second guess everything you've ever done in your life and wonder if the choices you made were the correct ones.  Satan loves to make me feel insecure!  It is definitely one of my biggest struggles.  So as the morning progressed several things came up that made us feel like there was a force trying to discourage me.  Everything that could go wrong did.  We were missing paperwork, our judge was sick, the courts were booked all day, you can get the picture.  I was encouraged by my sixteen year old to get on my knees and pray, so I did.  For being so young she is so wise and gives me so much support and strength.  When I got off my knees an overwhelming feeling of peace came over me and to make a long story short, we were able to squeeze into a hearing right before lunch and an extremely patient judge took my case and granted me the divorce in less than 5 minutes! 

Now I am not celebrating my divorce because it has been an extremely painful process for all of us, but I feel so blessed by the many tender mercies and legions of angels that have worked tirelessly on my sweet little family's behalf.  I fought so hard and suffered so much to try to keep my family an eternal family but in the end, I realized that I lost myself in the process.  I sacrificed my own happiness for everyone else and lost myself in the process.  Because I am so nice, I am taken advantaged of and taken for granted. Not anymore!

So today, I write.  I wanted to make a record of my new journey, my new path, the experiences I will be having, my successes and my failures.  And through this process, without going into detail on here, if there is anyone out there who has experienced heartache and betrayal, I pray that I can be of help.  I have a strong testimony of my Savior Jesus Christ, I know he lives and loves me and feels my pain, I know my Father in Heaven is extremely mindful of my and loves me also.  I am so grateful for the gospel in my life and I know that it is because of my knowledge, I have an eternal perspective, which has been my solid foundation through this entire process.  

Today was a good day.

-Celeste