Danielle and Payton Griffith: March 2010

Well, the time has come to explain what has happened to me in the last 2 weeks. Well, the last 2 years really. I wanted my blog to try and tell the real truth about what has been going on in our lives without unloading too much personal stuff, but also not acting like our lives are perfect and you should all want to be us. So since my life has changed dramatically in the last 2 weeks, it would be best to explain why. Josh and I are getting a divorce. Many say it was a long time coming, and I guess now I can see that too, I just really wanted things to work out with us. I felt like I had the fairytale life. High school sweethearts, waited for Josh while he went on a mission, married in the temple, bought a home, found out we were pregnant. It was when I was about 3 months pregnant that this idea I had of our lives came crashing down. Josh and I became very distant, and I found out he had been having an affair with a coworker. We had considered divorce then quite a bit. Josh could not decide if he wanted to stay with his pregnant wife, or continue his relationship with this *insert bad word here* he had been cheating with and claimed he loved. I felt it was at that point that I really lost who I was. I had lost Josh too. I couldn't understand how he could do this to me, especially after he knew I was pregnant. This girl and I are also complete opposites. She is on her second marriage, 2 children from different fathers, enjoys getting drunk, and is a smoker. I still don't get it. I started to question everything I had ever believed in. Marriage, the church, myself, everything I had such a strong testimony in became something I no longer felt was important. Josh moved out for about a month and then we decided to try and make things work between the two of us. I honestly felt like things got much better. We decided to move to get a fresh start. We thought a new ward would help us get back to church. Fast forward to 2 weeks ago. To my huge surprise Josh came to me and said he was really unhappy, and did not think he could be happy with me for the rest of his life. This was a huge shock to me. I had been depressed about my job and still had insecurities about the previous affair because he still worked with her everyday, but I did not feel like our lives were headed down this road again. Josh moved out saying he was very confused about what he wanted, but assured me over and over he had not been cheating again, and that he hadn't even talked to her. I believed this until I found an email he sent about 3 days after moving out to this same girl talking about how they were going to afford bills, ideas on how he wanted to remodel her house, how he wanted to be able to take care of her and her kids, that he couldn't stop thinking about her, and that he just wanted to "wrap her in his arms". I couldn't breathe for about 5 min. I confronted him and he said he had never stopped loving her. He also later admitted he had spent the night at her house after moving out. Once again, my world came crashing down. I knew this time we would be getting a divorce. At this point I have no idea what will happen. For some reason, Josh has become so hateful towards me, and I don't know why. I am working on my feelings towards him. I want to hate him, and I at least have a good reason, but I was with him for 8 years and I still care about him. He is the father to Payton, and a good one, so he will always be in my life. I'm so hurt by his actions and don't understand how anybody could cheat on the one they stood next to in the temple. I have a huge support system in my family and friends. I would not be doing as well as I am today if I didn't. I am so thankful for them who stood by my side during this whole disaster. I'm sure Josh and some of his family members are going to be furious that I have put all this on here, but I am just telling what has happened, and not my personal opinions about Josh or his girlfriend. I don't feel I need to protect Josh and what he has done to our family. He blames me for the ending of our marriage, and I know there are 2 sides to every story, but I have just given the facts.

For now I am just trying to be the best mom to Payton as well as working on myself. I have been through a lot at the age of 23. I am working on rebuilding my relationship with my Heavenly Father, and trying to get past all the hurt. At this point I just want to look forward.

I'm still going to blog here about what is going on with Payton and I. I have lots of fun plans for the upcoming summer. This is a new chapter of our lives we are still adjusting to it, but I am excited for what the future holds for us.

We really like projects. Well, at least I really do. I think Josh does, or at least he just lets me start them. We have had a lot of fun with this house. It needed a lot of work when we moved in. (that's what you get with a foreclosure, along with an amazing deal) At our last house we felt we had done a lot. Painting small upgrades to fixtures and things like that. We did completely gut the master bath, but my dad really did most of that. When we bought this house there were lots of things we needed to change, so we decided to go big (and when I say "big", I mean credit card debt) and do the things we really wanted, not just cheap. We love doing the projects ourselves, and frankly, we couldn't afford to hire them out. We have learned how to do so many things too. In our new house we have painted just about every wall, changed out almost all the fixtures, re-did the basement, and the biggest one was laying over 700sq feet of hardwood floors. Whew! It was exhausting. i had a list of all the things I wanted to get done to the house after the move, and almost a year later, we have finished the last project on that list. Tiling the back splash. Josh and I have never tiled before. We decided that the back splash would be a great start, and I am pretty dang excited with how it turned out. I am so ready to start making a new list of projects, and you can bet that tiling something will be on it.