Time.

There was a time--a long time--when all he had to do was say, "I want to come home," and I would have let him. No hesitation, no second thought, no questions asked.

That time has gone.

Two weeks ago, my ex-husband stood in my driveway and told me he was going to the beach with her family. My heart collapsed, my breath caught, my blood rushed into my ears. And then I remembered that this was exactly what I'd been asking for; exactly what I had been praying for: honesty. I've learned that my children spend time with her on a weekly basis, that her family hosted a small birthday party for my son, and that my ex-husband spends quite a bit of time with her on his own. I've learned that he is still classifying the relationship as nothing more than "good friends," and that he thinks I'm making things out to be "worse than they really are."

I don't know how things could get much worse.

What I do know, though, and what I am continuing to realize on a daily basis, is that the final emotional tie to him, the one that has had a death grip on my heart for so long, the one that I did not even know was still in existence, has been released. And I am thriving.

I'm still grieving, too, although now it is more of a grief over the deterioration of our relationship rather than a grief over the loss of him. I miss him, I miss what we once shared, and my heart aches at the thought of all we will miss in the future, but the "him" tucked away in my memory in no way resembles the man who stands in my driveway each week waiting to pick up his children. And it took a silly beach trip for me to make that connection. It took him owning up to his current reality for my eyes to truly open to the fact that there is not one bone in my body that wants to be in a relationship with the man he is today. Not one.

My perspective has been altered.

I was asked last week if, one year from now, I would take him back if he asked. I don't know the answer to that. I truly don't. If there is one lesson, though, that I cherish from the last year, it is this: I don't want to be anywhere other than in the center of God's will. I can't pretend to know what my future holds. I can't pretend that I have ultimate control over where I'll be five years from now. I can't pretend to know what will happen tomorrow. But I do know this: my heavenly Father knows, and has always known, me, and His Word tells me that He "knows the plans He has for me," and that they are plans to "prosper me and not to harm me."

And so I will follow Him, and I will wait with great anticipation as the next chapter of my life unfolds.

I know it's going to be good.