Has it really been 7 years?

I've been without Kim for 7 years today.  We were married a few months short of 9 years.  In just a couple more years I will have been without her for longer than we were married; a couple years beyond that, if the Lord keeps me here, I will be without her longer than I knew her.

Surreal.

I went to bed last night with these thoughts.  I woke up with them this morning.

I'll spend a couple hours tonight playing Uno and Jenga with college kids but these thoughts will be on my mind.

Inescapable.

What would life be like if that day had never happened?  You can't really play that game can you?

Rick Warren might say that these are the cards I've been dealt.  I have no control over my chemistry, connections, consciousness, or circumstances...but I do have control over my choices.

I've made good ones and I've made bad ones.  I'm probably not through yet with either.

But I keep saying, I keep telling people that I'd do it all over again.  It was the choice I made to marry Kim knowing full well what the outcome would be.  I'd do it all over again.

I keep thinking that someday the story will be complete.  Someday it will make sense.  Someday I'll understand why on the verge of 50 I'm still not a Daddy.  Someday I'll understand the apparent contradiction between desiring to be a daddy and marrying someone that precluded that possibility (and believing that if I had it to do over again I'd make the same choice).

Someday.