The One With Betty and Irene

I have a friend who is separated from her husband, and may be getting a divorce. We talked a little bit this week about divorce in the church. She said it seems on the surface as though everyone has a cookie-cutter family, but the more she thought about people she admires, she realized that their road to where they are was not the traditional "Mormon" route...boy meets girl, they marry, they have babies and live happily forever.

Betty was my dad's first wife. They had one daughter before my sister Lynne was born. Her name was Irene, and she died when she was very small. Betty and my dad divorced. Probably only a few of the hundreds of people who attended my dad's funeral even know he had been divorced. He went on to marry my mom, be a dad to six kids, a bishop, a mission president, a grandpa. He was a different person because of what he went through, but that was not necessarily a bad thing. He still went out and made everything he ever dreamed of come true. We can all go and do that, even if the road winds a little on the way.