Hindsight

Sometimes you never really know the reasons or even how it all fits together until you're a few years out and able to piece a timeline together. This is true for BK and I. Tomorrow my son turns four years old and it is a joyous and momentous occasion. I have primarily raised him on my own. He was conceived during a quick visit home from AIT while I was still married to my ex and he was gone until the last trimester of the pregnancy. With the military he traveled far and often the first year of my son's life and I was more often than not, alone raising 3 kids. Shortly after my son turned one I learned of my ex'es first few affairs that I had actual confirmation (from the mistress no less) and I filed for divorce before the end of summer.

Looking back through pictures of my son's first birthday party struck me for a few reasons. First, we were class A actors. We are smiling and engaging and a family unit throughout the party - little did anyone know we'd been fighting like cats and dogs and my stomach had begun eating itself with ulcers from stress. After everyone left that night we fought for hours, I knew something was off but he wouldn't admit to what was going on. I should have left then, but didn't. The second thing that strikes me is that BK is in the pictures. That was the day we met for the first time, we'd been introduced before but neither of us remembers it much as the circumstances were tragic and nobody was emotionally equipped for introductions or to remember the other well enough. But we do remember meeting each other at my son's party. I remember how well he got along with my husband and how I was pleased that my friend's boyfriend was such a good man to her. We talked about making plans together as couples and hanging out. That about sums up my memory of him. I never saw him again, until we met up for dinner a few years later by which time both our lives had drastically changed.

And tomorrow we are preparing to throw my son's fourth birthday party, and he will be there right by my side. He get's how it is to raise a son on your own, especially as a single mom. He get's what I've been through with the numerous affairs my ex put me through. And he puts up not only with my ex and creates a buffer and barrier for me, but he unconditionally supports me. Tomorrow is such a big day for me, and I am so very glad to have this amazing man by my side.

I never in a million years would have thought, looking at those pictures, that the guy in the background would eventually become my best friend, my soul mate, the man I feel completely safe and free with; something I've never felt before with any other man in  my life. BK is such a huge piece of the puzzle, and when you go back through the last 3 years and put all the pieces together of what we've been through on each of our ends - it suddenly fits. It doesn't make sense, probably never will and we don't try to make it. Instead I'm just thankful. Four years of parenting this amazing little man I am blessed to call my son. And an amazing man I am now blessed to call my love and best friend walked out of the shadows and right up beside me and grabbed my hand. I am so incredibly grateful for BK and that first date and those messages and that he took the step into our lives. We are all blessed by this man. Hindsight isn't always 20/20, but I also no longer feel the need to question it.