timing

Yesterday a woman told me the story of how she came about marrying her second husband. It was movie worthy!

As a young girl, Mary (we'll call her) got pregnant right before her sister was to be married. Being the time that it was, her mother insisted that she marry her boyfriend in order to save face at her sister's wedding. She did, knowing that he wasn't the one she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. Three children and ten years later Mary finally was able to get a divorce from her husband. In her words "He believed in not working" and she had been supporting them financially through their entire marriage. Once the divorce was final, her divorce lawyer, we'll call him Dave, turned out to be someone she was very interested in and vice versa. They dated for three years before her mother became ill and she made the decision to move her children and life to Georgia to be with her. Mary's relationship with Dave wasn't meant to be a long distance one so they went their separate ways. Over the course of eleven year, Mary lost her mother and father, her children grew up and went to college, and she found herself at a new start...again...in Georgia. This brings us to Christmas 2010. Mary decides to send a Christmas card to Dave, just a friendly, how is your life, card. He quickly responds and tells Mary to come to Buffalo to visit as soon as she can. Mary does. Mary and Dave married last October and she said she's the happiest she's ever been.

Yup, all that at the cutting counter at Joann's. I couldn't believe it. She was bursting at the seams to tell the story and her joy was absolutely infectious. I was pretty blown away.

After thinking about the story for the rest of the day I couldn't ignore the idea of timing. Timing played such a big part of how Mary met and eventually married Dave. If she hadn't moved and had married Dave when they dated the first time maybe it wouldn't have worked out. There was a reason they didn't re-find each other until years later.

I can't help but think about the ended relationships in my life. Why they ended. Sure there were specific reasons that I could point out. Reasons to call exes mean names or hold bitter feelings towards....like everyone wants to do. But in reality, wasn't it just timing?

It's like everybody is on a time line and they're a different version of themselves as the time line goes on. As they meet people, who are on their own time lines, they are a not the same person as they were a week, a month, a year before. In terms of my relationships, I can't help but feel like in each of them neither of us were the person we were supposed to be yet in order to make the relationship really last. We weren't the people we needed to be for each other. Our timelines didn't match up. Sure some people were closer than others and those relationships can lasted for a while, but they didn't go all the way.

Timing is everything. No one knows who will enter, exit, and re-enter their life. Maybe when someone exits your life it's simply because they aren't the right version of them-self yet. Maybe you aren't the right version of yourself yet. Maybe eleven years down the road you'll both be at the right places in your timelines and what's meant to be, will be. The joy is in the journey.

So thank you to Mary. I wish you and Dave all the happiness in the world!