I didn’t mean to. It was an accident really. I’m pretty sure it started after I got re-married. Many of you followed my living with dying story as Friends of Tim Bresenden Fighting Cancer Together. (That’s a wild ride that I’ll save for another post.) Long story short, through that unbelievable suffering I received constant affirmation that
1. Miracles happen every day
2. When you win the lottery you can’t be angry that you only won $50 million instead of $250 million (My life with Tim was the lottery)
3. God is making a beautiful tapestry out of my life. I can only see a small corner right now, but He IS at work.
4. I still have a lot of living and loving to do
So, naturally, I decided to be open to love and new beginnings and getting down to the business of creating a new story for my life. A story of “Love Wins”.
After a couple of years, I met a man. I fell in love, walked down the aisle to say ‘I do’ and BAM! I’ve got 6 kids ages 5-15 under one roof, a new marriage to cultivate, new church to built community with and NO IDEA how to make it all work. I was busy creating a new life and just didn’t have time for Facebook.
Everyone was hurting. Our brood still grieving the loss of a parent - each in their own way. Half of them were in a new school, with no friends and trying to navigate adolescence. They were grieving the loss of the new normal they had grown accustomed to in a single parent household. We were newly married trying to figure out how to make locking the door and turning up the music seem like “Date Night”.
Now, I can look back and say, “What was I thinking? Who did I think I was to even try?”
Things started to unravel pretty quickly. We were in a pressure cooker. Too many wounds from the past. Not enough grace. Dark secrets struggling to surface.
I was treading water – flailing really – telling myself that if I just tried harder love would win. I fell into despair and just couldn’t bring myself to share it on Facebook.
I couldn’t place my painful present next to the photo of some world-class, 3-course organic meal someone made from scratch while taking the time to take a photo of the finished product in an already cleaned kitchen.
It didn’t even occur to me to ask for help as I scrolled through shares of funny cat videos in my newsfeed.
So I just turned it off. I literally didn’t look at Facebook for at least a year.
When the marriage ended, I was devastated. The kids were devastated. My dream of living a new story with a new family was in ashes. And as heart-broken as I was, I knew that staying in that relationship would’ve been even worse. At my lowest low, I wondered if I was a bad person for imagining a fatal accident that could finally set me free from my misery. Scary stuff. Excruciating.
As time and healing went on, I told myself that I was too busy living in the present to be wasting my time on Facebook.
Technically, I WAS busy living. In one year, the kids and I rode elephants in Thailand, hiked glaciers in Argentina, Camped in Yosemite, brought home a National Gaelic Football championship from a tournament in New York…it was an exhilarating whirlwind!
Last year, I inched back to Facebook. I could probably count the number of posts on one hand.
So, if you were wondering why I left Facebook, now you know. I said it was an accident, but it wasn’t. “I don’t have time”, “I can’t share”, “It’s a waste of time” were stories I was telling myself so I didn’t have to admit that I was hiding the brutal side of a beautiful life.
Fast forward to today. It’s 2016 and I’ve made “SHARE” my sacred word. (Thank you, Leone Dawson!) I’m ready to share my story; Share my dreams and nightmares; Share my epic fails and amazing miracles; Share the burden of those who are brave enough to share those burdens with me and encourage them along the way.