A new day, and a new me!

A new day….and a new me…..April 2012

Well as a kid, my favorite saying in anticipation of something fun, like Christmas, or a birthday, or the last day of school, was “the day after tomorrow”.  Being able to say this was like it was the CLOSEST it has ever been so it was a phrase that excited me like none other to be able to say.

Yesterday I was saying “the day after tomorrow”, but today I am saying TOMORROW!  Tomorrow I will become Lisa Gayle Taylor once again.  How ironic that it is 20 years and 20 days after the first time I returned to my roots and this name.

I was raised in a great, not just good, southern family.  Our values were strong.  I believed in marriage, and still do, and married for FOREVER.  But my first marriage took a terrible turn.  God protected me, allowed me an “out” and saved me from a life of domestic violence that I now fight strongly against.  That marriage gave me a reason to volunteer, fight, and speak against something that has an impact on way too many marriages.

Then came my second marriage.  My prince had arrived.  Yet 14 years after uttering those vows, I suffer a horrific surgery and a life altering event, and one that he could not deal with in a supportive fashion long term.  My world starts caving in.  Everything that I knew to be good was now possibly not.  In the midst of planning my oldest daughter’s wedding, my own marriage was in jeopardy.  My mind went from everything being amazingly good and my life being a blessing to everything being upside down and not knowing where I was going to land.

I held it together.  And I held my own.  But my marriage did not survive.  What I thought to be the love of a lifetime crumbled.  But I picked up the pieces, I dusted myself off, and I carried on.   And now, tomorrow, I am regaining who I have always been, and who I should have been 3 years ago, Lisa Gayle Taylor.

While I thought that being Lisa Lewis for the last 17 years was who I truly was, I realized it wasn’t.  I needed to get me back, Lisa Taylor, Lisa Lou after my mother, not Lisa Lewis attached to a marriage that no longer existed.  I have returned to my roots, returned to myself, and I’m finding that I like who I am without being connected to that life any longer.  Not only am I finding out that I am happy with me, I know that I can truly be happy with others without a need for control, anxiousness, worry, or concern about whether those others “make” me happy.  I make me happy.  My relationship with God makes me happy.  When we have Him, we need nothing else.

With that said, though, I do know that I still believe in love and I do want to love again.  I am looking for something different now though.  I will no longer let someone else define who I am or what makes me happy.  Whoever I let into my life will compliment me and add to the happiness that already exists in my life.  They will be someone to share the great things in life with, and the trials, too.  I look to find someone who can be my friend, my companion, my spiritual leader, and someone who I admire, respect, and trust.  I want someone to share my family with and someone who is willing to share their family with me.  And I am looking for someone who can make me laugh.

So it is a new day in the life of Lisa Taylor.  My relationship with my Lord and Savior is getting stronger each day.  I know when he is ready, he will help me find another life partner, but until he does, I am happy; I am happy with Lisa Taylor.  She is faithful, strong, independent, and willing to love again whether it is a year from now, 6 months from now, or the day after tomorrow.  I know the day is closer than it has ever been and I praise God for it!