"We get a do-over": After bitter divorce, couple gets second chance at love
BOWLING GREEN, Ohio -- Lorrie Agan of Bowling Green, Ohio, is about to marry her soulmate. But getting to this moment was not easy. After her first marriage ended in a bitter divorce, Lorrie says she couldn't have ever imagined this.
"It's a miracle that this happened," Lorrie said. "This doesn't happen every day, that people get a second chance at true love."
Her first chance ended so badly, the memory of it was relegated to a closet floor. Their eight wonderful children aside, Lorrie says she and her ex-husband just did not mesh.
"The fighting, what the kids were witnessing. I just didn't want in our lives anymore," she said.
The kids say it was that bad. They told us "we blamed ourselves," and that they thought "it was because of us."
The whole family was an absolute wreck. But in the wake of the divorce, Lorrie decided to fix the only person she could: herself. She worked hard to build-up her self-esteem and got treatment for depression.
Meanwhile, across town, her ex-husband Jeff was going through his own reckoning. He sought treatment for alcoholism and turned his life around. Like Lorrie, he wanted to change for himself, not her.
But their self-improvements came with an unintended consequence. Eventually, they could actually tolerate being in the same room at the same time. They didn't have to have two separate birthday parties for each kid. And last year, they spent Christmas together.
Still, not even the children knew how close they'd become -- until Lorrie got her present from Jeff.
It was a love poem that ended with a familiar ring. Laurie had found her soulmate – again.
"There are no words to express what I felt at that moment," she said.
Last month, four years after their break-up, Lorrie and Jeff got married. They called it a healing ceremony. And heal, it did.
"I was just so happy for my parents," said Sean, one of their children. "It's just they've both come so far. I'm just so proud of them."
"We get a do-over. Who gets do-overs in this world?" said Lorrie.
"The big thing I would add to that is: don't be too proud to get help, because some jobs are too big for you to do by yourself," said Jeff.
Sometimes we like say love is lost, when often it's just misplaced, and waiting to be found.
