Beautifully Broken

still have the same last name. I thought about it constantly. I was excited and so thankful for the opportunity, but how was I going to explain my affiliation with Josh? It was hard enough dealing with missing half of my first year at Auburn to have a baby, but to add that I didn’t plan on continuing life with the baby’s father was not how I wanted to start my career there. I prayed for clarity, asking God to help us work out something that made as much sense as possible, even though we were in an extremely awkward situation. I could temporarily settle my thoughts by reminding myself that I had made a choice and was not going back. We were still going to be great co-parents. I loved Josh as a parent, and I was committed to stepping aside and letting that flourish while I created my own life. My finances were in order to get a town home and things for the baby. I was researching how to change my insurance to cover me and the kids so Josh wouldn’t have to. It wasn’t ideal, but I told myself it was going to be fine. In the end, we don’t want to be together, so even though divorce is messy, we will forge our own paths and realize that we can care for each other better without the pressures of being a good spouse. We have made it through graduation, we will get the house figured out, we will have this baby, and then we can move forward with our plans to separate.

I spent May of 2016 transitioning from my old job to my new job. As I was getting ready for work one morning, I kept replaying a conversation I had had with Josh the night before. We had talked about some concrete details to make our divorce as smooth as possible—who was getting daycare pickup and drop-off, who was going to have the kids which nights, who was going to tell our friends, and so on. Deep down, I still hated the idea of us getting divorced, but I just felt completely tapped out of emotions. Raising a child with one on the way was enough for me. Josh was still tearful and upset. I was drained, emotionally spent, and thankful that it would soon be a burden I would not have to carry anymore. Josh had already left the house to take Harper to daycare, and I was loading my car for my last week of commuting to Montgomery. When I went back in the house to grab my phone, I had a voice mail from a number in Alaska.

The message was from Franklin Graham’s organization, Samaritan’s Purse, inviting us to a week-long retreat called Operation Heal Our Patriots. This retreat takes place in Port Alsworth, Alaska, a village southwest of Anchorage that is so secluded, the only way to get there is to fly a seaplane onto Lake Clark. I had applied for this trip in 2012 when we were still at Walter Reed. Friends said it was life changing, not just because of the Alaskan experience, but because the group conversations were led by former military couples who once struggled with family life after service. The demand for the trip kept us from going in 2012. We applied again in 2013 and 2014, but slots were filled from waitlists from years prior. I didn’t even apply for trips after we left the hospital because I thought we were done with taking veteran-based trips. Yet, here I was listening to a voice mail from a trip coordinator who “had noticed we had been on the waitlist for a while.” I do not believe in coincidences, especially in the season of life I was in. I repeatedly asked God in tearful prayers to stop me or get my attention in any way He saw fit if I wasn’t doing the right thing. I clearly hadn’t gotten the hint when we both had been offered a job at Auburn, so here was God with another one.

I felt conflicted over this voice mail. I fully planned to obey God and take this opportunity, but did this mean that Josh and I were going to be… okay? I didn’t know much about a healthy marriage, but I do know staying married does not equal success. I wasn’t even sure I knew what a healthy marriage for us looked like at that point. A marriage retreat on the other side of the country wasn’t a gentle request to stop and reconsider; it was set up for actual healing. Could we be healed? Could we actually look at each other differently? I couldn’t see it, but I also couldn’t dismiss the possibility, either. My workday consisted of all the requirements of closing out a job (exit interviews with human resources, turning in keys, and leaving notes for the future coach) at AUM. With every task came a thought that circled me back to the opportunity in Alaska. Everything you’re doing here is getting you one day closer to your husband. What if God is actually moving us to the same university so we can fix our situation? Rolling my eyes at my own inner monologue, the other side of my mind went, Oh yeah, because that’s how life works—God gives people jobs to save their marriages. Still, a small voice countered back to me: Maybe that’s actually what Alaska is for.

After getting home from work I told Josh we needed to talk. I let him listen to the voice mail about Alaska, and he looked at me with great uncertainty. With a sigh, I said, “You know, Josh, I don’t know what will happen in the next five years or the next five seconds. I thought I knew what was best for our family, but the truth is I don’t know what to do. I still have a ton of questions, and I