Growingupgambills

In the last 18 months, almost every facet of my life has changed, some for the good, and some for the not-so-good. I have written posts but not published much. The heartbreak and trauma to the kids was all I could handle at the time. However, we are moving into a new and better part of our lives now. It seems fitting to start over with a new blog. This one kept my creative heart beating for many years, but it’s full of content that I would rather leave here. I do not wish to encapsulate my life and the tragedy that occurred, I just need space and distance from it, even if it Is only true in cyberspace. So, if you desire, the new blog is called Maccabees Mama and it’s right here on WordPress. I hope you take whatever you need from my writing. I hope it helps you in some way, because at times, it saves me.

Maccabeesmama.wordpress.com

I am so grateful to those around me who love me well. Right now I feel like I am not loving very well in return. I am learning to accept help and love, knowing that some days I can give nothing back. That too is an important skill, accepting.  
Love does conquer all, truly.  
Conquering is hard work. Conquering requires a hard fought battle against a formidable enemy. We will not be passively overrun with bitterness, anger, or cynscism.  
It is an exhausting battle sometimes, most of the time. The lands that we are winning over are the hearts and souls of my children, and myself. We are not only defending our borders, but expanding our territory to include healing, forgiveness and accepting love from unexpected places. We are a new country. We are a stronger and better place to live. We are not an easy place to live, but we have a lot of people sending their troops to fight when we tire out.  
Learning to accept love, change, healing and help is scary. Admitting to having a need for these things is not defeat. It empowers us to move forward, even with a limp. 
Love continues to rule the roost around here, conquering us too.  

Doug and I are no longer communicating.  He has chosen to pass up regular contact with our children because he cannot contact his mistress on our family phone.  I can hear the gasps from all of you lovely readers now…. it just keeps getting worse right?   The leaving, the affair in our home, the lying, and now this….

Well friends, take heart, we are all doing alright, myself and the children that is….   Every time he does or says something completely horrific it helps us move on all the more.  I feel that truly there is none of the Doug that I loved left alive.  His selfishness and cruelty has effectively smothered out the man I shared my life with.  It is still incredibly sad, the bad choices he has made, but not necessarily sad for us, not forever st least.  It is sad that he had a wife and children who loved him and he could not even recognize it or accept it. It is sad that he has gone from a devoted husband and father to an adulterous dead beat dad, and he is allright with that reality.  

However, we are getting less sad everyday.  It is actually a little surprising to me, and to all of us. We still have a long way to healing, but we are on the right road.  I still miss the man I knew, but somehow through grace, my heart knows he is not coming back.  Even if he did wake up,  nothing would be right.  To do what he has done requires a level of disregard for love, marraige and family that is so astounding that I would venture to say that he had no understanding of these things in the first place.  

I have often wondered how on earth he could completely and totally abandon his entire moral code so quickly and in such a disgusting way.  I think (for today at least), that maybe he did not change at all in order to do what he did.  Maybe he just got tired.  

Maybe he got tired from pretending that he was good.  We now know what a skilled liar he is, maybe he practiced the most on himself.  People do not become that incredibly skilled in repeated deception in a handful of months.  It takes a lifetime to hone that special brand of mean.   It seems everyday that the people that surround me, and have always supported us, reveal to me yet another lie that he told with complete confidence.  

In my journals, starting from 21 years ago, and more recently in conversation with Doug, I was terrified of time spent apart.  I wrote page after page as a newlywed and in the early years about his absences.   He was gone a lot for work of course, he was a very hard worker.  But he insisted on spending his sparse free time out with his “friends”, sometimes all night.  He would promise to call and the phone never rang.  He would very easily get distracted by other people and things that did not include me.  More recently, I would talk to him at length about the pattern that was becoming clearer and repeating more often.  Simply stated, if we were apart for long, he would forget about me.  When we were re-united he would display an abrupt change in behavior, and it was never a good change, quite the opposite.  He would agree to not do it again, and then he would, again and again.  

The longer this life continues, the more I am realizing that he did not forget about me, he forgot about who I thought he was.  I was not there to remind him that he was married, that he was good, that he told the truth, that he was honorable and that he made promises.  He claims rather fervently that I was controlling him, often making ominous threats about “people who know us, know who you really are”.  Maybe I was controlling him, trying to convince him that he was someone he clearly is not.  Maybe I am not who people think I am, a wife with a devoted and faithful husband.  I have openly admitted, in my life and in my writings, that I am not perfect, I am flawed, and that is what makes the life that I live even more of a miracle.  

Even though I love my life of parenting and loving our children, it is hard.  I knew that staying home with a houseful of very challenging children is very isolating.   The constant stress, lack of sleep, emergencies that happened all too often and the lack of help had taken a toll on Doug and on our marraige.  This move was supposed to be the start of healing for us, together.  It was supposed to offer us the opportunity to spend more time together and more time just in enjoyment of our children…

Then he bailed.  

So maybe just maybe the person Doug is now is who he has always been.  Maybe the thought of being good and honorable all the time, because we would be together much more often,  was too much to bare.  

As a result of his absence, the children and I are learning new skills.  Frannie is learning how to make her own sandwiches and put her cloths away.  Grace is learning that she is an adult now ( and she is doing great). Liz is learning that I need her to be patient and we don’t have the luxury of her tantrums.  Aaron is getting better every single minute at talking, listening and bring sociable.  Zeke is just doing everything, taking, playing, putting away laundry, his colors and numbers. Even Sollie is back to kicking his feet, cooing and being generally precious.  I am learning that there are other people in my life that love me to a depth, reflecting Christs love for me, that I never could have imagined.  

We are still mourning the end of a life that we had always envisioned, one with Doug at the head of our family.  As we move forward though, there has been an unexpected lifting of oppression.   It is very difficult to explain, but we all feel lighter, more relaxed,  less guarded, less walking on eggshells, less of the dark and more of the light.   Being sad and mourning are things that our family has done before.  Many things, dreams, hopes and even children have been mourned for.  This is different, this is a lifting.  We are sad, but we are not heavy with the burden of grief.  

Mercy, grace, mourning, sadness, joy, greatfullness and love continue to rule in our home.  We are far far far from perfect, but we are together.  Tears come unexpectedly, sometimes a few times a day.  We are adjusting to a new routine, but none of this is bad.  Even the bad days are not bad, but a part of the process of us letting go of what’s gone.  We are letting the gone be as it has chosen.  

We are asking for and receiving support.  We are making new friends.  We are learning that trusting was not our mistake, but twisted by a man who has withered from lack of it. Right now all of our trust lies in our Lord.  He has sent His people.  He has surrounded us in His protection.  We trust our Savior more than we ever have, not less 

We are looking towards the future. We are not sure what it will be, but we continue to lift our eyes to look.  Please continue to lift us, and our close family, up in prayer.   We can feel it.  We sincerely need it, and we are forever grateful.  

Today we made it to mass, three weeks in a row, and ON TIME.  That alone is a miracle in itself.  As we wade through the thick of this grief, certain things float to the surface that give us hope.  One day we will feel settled. One day I will not feel so lost and incredibly sad.  One day a text from Doug will not leave me crying in the Wendy’s drive-through.  

I believe that Doug and I made promises and formed a holy and sacred bond. I believe that we were meant to be married for our entire lives.  However, I also believe that God gave him free will.  Doug took off his wedding ring apparently sometime as he was frantically grabbing his stuff.  He left it in the kitchen.  Poor Grace found it.  Just like that, he thinks he can dissolve the bond that we have forged. I felt so bad for Grace.  No child should ever have to find their fathers wedding ring, the thing that symbolized promises to all of us, left and treated as though it held no value.  Neither Grace or Liz remember him even saying good-bye.  I don’t remember it either.  He says he did, but I doubt it. He is not known for truth these days. 

I do not understand why or how we were not worth fighting for, why we were not worth the time and effort it would take in order to heal.  I do not understand how just two months after he said he loved me so much, how he was committed “no matter what”, that he left us.  This was us, with 21 years of marriage and this houseful of children. I did not even know I was in a battle.  I do not understand how he walked out that day and drove 1,000 miles away.  I hope I never understand.  

Grace wrote me this note in order to replace the letters from Doug to me in high school, 23 years ago.  I find notes all over the house.   All of the kids are processing in their own way.  Their hearts and idea of love has been forever altered. The person who was supposed to protect and love us, left us.  They look to me now in order to show them that the problem was not with them.   They look to me to show them that they deserve all the love I can pour out, which overflows.   

My post last year on Fathers Day, and a friend commenting from this year.  Oh what a difference a year makes.   Please keep praying for all of us.  Doug is lost, he has forgotten who he is, whose he is, and listened to lies. 

Solomon is improving every single day. He is smiling, reaching, and kicking his feet. We know we have limited time with Sollie. We have no idea how long he will live. Everyday is a gift, but that is especially true for this one. I cannot imagine ANYTHING that would make me give up any of those days. #gambillbeautyfromashes #sollieissoloved 

This also gets posted. I want to remember not just the most ugly part of evil attempting to ruin us, but then not just the good either, because Lord knows what he chose was not The Good. My God will redeem it for Good, but the process is HARD my friends. This is my bed, full of children who are breaking, not just once but over and over and over. The nights seem to be the hardest. We are tired and it takes effort to just get through the day. Building a whole new life with no notice, and missing two people whom you thought to be your biggest pillars of strength and truth, it’s hard. But my will to show them that love is alive and well and still chosen to be lived by us is so much stronger, for today at least. Forming beauty out of our broken hearts is not for us to do, but it is for us to ask for; receive; give thanks; and share. This bed was used in a set up to destroy us, and yes the most terrible happened. But the redemption will be much sweeter. Redemption is always bigger than the breaking. This breaking was the biggest I had ever known. It has been bigger than hospitalizations, surgeries, illnesses, and even death. We held onto our promises to God and each other through all those things. I know these grievances of pain against my children, I was familiar with their threat. We loved each other through them. So instead, not dressed in the familiar of autism or ventilators, but of a good friend in need, who hugged my children, and comforted me when I cried. I quite literally opened my door to HELL, dressed and disguised as love, but underneath was putrid with a rotting soul. I’m sharing too so it is documented well, the beginnings of our better way together. Because it will be so full of good, that maybe it will even be unbelievable. So once again, I write to save my life, and once again I will have my own trusted heart words to read and remind me always of the TRUTH; that my Christ never left us, and can redeem anything you ask. #2017gambillsummer #gambillbeautyfromashes

Just gonna apologize now… then it’s gonna be shameless posting for the foreseeable future. I’ve gotta keep the GOOD out in the front. Saturday swimming bath-time has arrived!

#theawesomegpossums #2017gambillsummer

Sollie enjoying a good soak. I get these moments, Thank God

Yep. 3am. This one has lots of questions. Please form an army of prayer and protection for our family. I got the best parts of the entire deal though… my children.