I Have a Step Wife

From Chicken Soup for the Soul: Divorce and Recovery

BY: By Christa B. Allan

Life is mostly froth and bubble,
Two things stand like stone,
Kindness in another's trouble,
Courage in your own.
~Adam Lindsay Gordon

I simultaneously became and acquired a step-wife the day my ex-husband married again. Even though this event occurred over a decade after our own divorce, and quite some time after my own remarriage, we soon discovered its potential for disaster.

Ultimately, the best communication between my step-wife and me was no communication, except through the one person we had in common: my ex, her present husband. At times, I felt sure Jerry Springer or Dr. Phil would call and beg us to appear on their shows. Other days, I prayed eHarmony would consider developing dimensions of compatibility for step-wives and step-husbands.

For a few years, our unspoken agreement to remain politely civil at family occasions that required our mutual attendance served us well. For the sake of the children, we'd continue to maintain this acquired grace in one another's presence for as long as necessary -- or until one of us moved to Mars.
I could not have predicted two uninvited, unyielding, and entirely unexpected females who would alter the course of our lives. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita not only changed physical landscapes, but relational ones as well.

My husband, Ken, my twenty-four-year-old daughter with Down syndrome, Sarah, and I left our home five days after Hurricane Katrina struck. Although our home was relatively undamaged, the business that employed my husband was barely recognizable. In the weeks that followed, my ex and my step-wife offered us financial help, rearranged their schedules so that they could help with Sarah, and blessed us with the assurance that they would take her for as long as it took us to resettle. During one of the times my step-wife and I were meeting for a Sarah drop-off, my step-wife slipped money into my hand, refusing to take it back. Her kindness humbled and overwhelmed me.

By September, we had decided to move to Lake Charles, three hours away from our former home. Because my husband was still roving to find jobs and I was living with friends, Sarah stayed in Texas with her father. The day I was to report to my new job, Ken and I woke to the news that Hurricane Rita was on her way.

Not only did we have to evacuate, so did the cities where my ex-husband, my step-wife, Sarah, my son and daughter-in-law, and my four-month-old granddaughter lived. At the time, it looked as though Rita was heading straight for them. Evacuations, now with heightened seriousness because of Katrina, meant that traffic clogged streets faster than cheesecake clogs arteries. A typical three-hour drive home -- now ironically a safe place for us to go -- ended almost seven hours later.

I was safe, but the rest of my family was not. In Texas, my son and his family spent three hours to reach my ex, his dad, who lived less than an hour away. They all had to reach safety, but how? During the long hours we were being pummeled by Katrina, I prayed and begged God to forgive my stupidity for having stayed. Before Rita made landfall, I once again begged God, but this time to protect my family in Texas who might not be able to find a way out.

Step-wife to the rescue. One of her clients sent his private plane to pick up my family and fly them to safety. My gratitude for her, once again, overwhelmed me. Even two years later, I feel my throat tighten when I recall how they were protected, as if God had sent angels to scoop them up.

Katrina and Rita were devastating forces whose aftermath is still evident today. For all their physical brutality, however, they destroyed an emotional wall that needed to be razed to the ground. I learned, from those two powerful females, that two other equally strong women could survive.

I learned that being and having a step-wife can result in miracles.

http://www.beliefnet.com/Inspiration/Chicken-Soup-For-The-Soul/2009/10/I-Have-a-Step-Wife.aspx?source=NEWSLETTER