Let me just start off by THANKING all of you. I cannot even believe the outpour of positive vibes and prayers during this whole chapter of our lives. I will not ever be able to express how thankful we both are and that is what has lead us into sharing more of our journey. Jesse and I both agree we want to use this time in our lives to help others who may be going through something similar.
Just a little back story for those of you who may not know. Jesse and I have been together since I was 17, he was 22. We were babies. I grew up and lived in Arizona when we met, he would come out every single weekend to see me for months. My family had a business opportunity clear across the country so I moved to California the day I turned 18 to be with Jesse. We moved to Newport Beach and got our own little studio where we were basically living every young couples dream for about a year. I got pregnant with River right after I turned 19 and had him 3 and a half months before I was 20 #teenmom #19andpregnant
I know you're probably wondering why the hell I am going back this far right now but I am just trying to give you guys some insight to our reasoning that lead to our recent separation. As many of you mamas out there know when we deliver a baby, we pretty much age like 30 years. I walked into the hospital like a 19 year old and walked out with a baby like a 50 year old, mentally haha still looked like a 12 year old running around with a baby! That being said, men aka Jesse did not grow up overnight in the same way I did. He still wanted to live his life and be with his friends. I call this have his cake and eat it too.
I have two perfect boys, two very successful businesses, a beautiful life, and everyone that I need in it already. I felt like I reached a place in my life where I knew what I wanted and was not willing to accept anything less, regardless of the history together, the boys, or our whole lives we built together. It was not worth feeling like it's not right. He was not my person. We had'nt slept in the same room in what seemed like years. We did "family" things together but never anything outside of that. If we did go anywhere we would be with friends and would hardly say 3 words to each other the whole night. Our marriage felt like it became a job, a job that I did not want anymore. We had multiple conversations and I truly did not want it to come down to us separating or getting divorced. I always thought he would wake up and change one day. That I would be good enough, that he would just want his family. No more friends that he hardly knew, no more coming home at 3 am when he was suppose to leave right after I did to go be with the boys, a night we would actually go to bed together when we were camping or at the river.
I felt like I had it all but I didn't.
Being financially independent is also another really hard factor in my decision. I did not need him for ANYTHING other than love and support, to be my best friend, my partner in life. I did not want my boys to grow up in a home where they did not see their mom and dad loving each other 24/7. My parents have been together since my mom was 15 and they are still just as happy as they were the day they met. My mom is my dads queen and he is her king. God has always been a huge part of their lives, they actually even met at church. That being said I grew up in a very christian home. My grandparents were pastors and had their own church, my dad went to bible college, and my parents were youth pastors. Church every Sunday and Wednesday, christian camp durning the summer, etc. You get the gist of it.
When you turn 18 and ride off into the sunset building your own life sometimes you forget to carry over some of the things that held your whole life together growing up. For me, that was my relationship with the Lord. I still prayed every day, listened to christian music all the time, but I wasn't as invested. We were not invested. Christ was not a part of our relationship. I would go to church but Jesse always felt judged and did not have very good experiences which ultimately led to him restricting his relationship with God. Don't get me wrong, he is a believer and has always had his own kind of relationship with Christ but it was not until we recently fell apart BOTH of us were brought to our knees begging for help. For him, his prayer was for me to have a change of heart and want to work things out and for me it was for anything. I needed guidance, I needed light, I trusted God had a plan for me. I never in a million years thought Jesse could be what I truly needed, because for nearly 12 years he hadn't. But, in that time he never surrendered himself to God, to be the man he knew I needed.
This is the only way I can explain this and I hope it makes some sort of sense.
Jesse will be the first to say, what I did by leaving him and us being separated for nearly 4 months needed to happen. He needed to see what life was like without us. I feel like God put emotional blinders on me, aloud me to not feel the pain over our marriage coming to an end only to truly show Jesse how it would be if we did not end up working things out. Really put himself in that space of loss.
Now here's the part that may or may not be relatable for others. When we split up, the first thing people want to tell you is to "start dating and get your mind off things". I mean they told me this and they told him this, to be 100% truthful I probably would have had I had more time but that was not the case. I was constantly telling Jesse to go out on a date to get his mind off me. He wouldn't. He didn't. To make a long story short right now, neither one of us went out with someone else during our time separated. The reason I am telling you this is because I feel like it plays a big factor into our own personal journey of working things out.
Now, here's how God played the biggest factor in healing our marriage. He protected what was ours while we were separated and when it was God's time for us to be together he showed me something he never has before in Jesse. We were trying to do more things together with the boys so they had both of us. We had gone out to dinner one night and Jesse would not stop staring at me. It was almost pissing me off because I felt something that I had not felt before and I didn't want to. I went home and called my mom balling because I knew at that point my heart was open. I didn't understand it and I didn't want to. Everything over the past few months I had been through, all for us to just get back together. No way! I had come too far on my own. I was stronger than this. I did not want to give in.
The next time we were together with the boys, all the writing was on the wall. Jesse must have done the exact thing I had done with the Lord because he was a different person. For the first time in nearly 12 years I felt truth. The things he was telling me, the things he was willing to do, were from his heart and I believed every single word. We have been inseparable since.
Neither one of us needed God more in our lives than during this time. Moral of the story is, God needs you to need him. I hope and pray our journey can help someone else in their own. If you would have asked me during our time separated if we would ever be able to work things out it was a definite NO. I did not see the light at the end of the tunnel for us.
I am so thankful to have experienced this and hopefully we never have to go through anything like this again. I know we will struggle at times, I know we will have arguments and not always agree but to have each other trumps all of that.
I love you Jesse James.
