My Father's Grace; The Key to Sanctity in Divorce

     I have been reflecting on how my actions created my life. Nothing ever happens to us without some sort of choice on our part Poor judgment, not speaking up, ignoring our gut. Sometimes our actions have lasting consequences and in this case, it surely has.  I have three grown children and I do not hear from the oldest two, and there are times when the youngest one is influenced enough not to communicate.  The Orders Concerning Custody were illegally removed from the Court file which in essence, eliminated my Joint Custody. I can tell you the day and whom, but I cannot prove it. I know that two men and a woman who never take off work, and I mean NEVER were all in Cripple Creek on a work day. Later that day, I brought the younger two children home and when they asked their Grandpa why he was at our home and would he stay, the man and his wife would only say they had been to Cripple Creek and bolted out the door.  The children's father changed the subject. There are two things in Cripple Creek, gambling and a Court House. No stores to speak, nothing.  My first mistake, I ignored the nagging feeling of distrust. I should have thought it through and listened to my intuition as to how to proceed.
 
   Anyone who has been through a divorce less than an amicable one knows that during the process you live in a glass house  You live in a fish bowl. You most probably have been followed by a PI. In my case even his friends would come to my home looking for clues. One man asked to use my personal bathroom as opposed to the immaculate guest bath off the living room. If I drank a drink once a year, it was a lot. I was  not the one having affairs or sleeping with high school students. His first known sex was with Nita three months after we were married while my mother and I waited eight hours at his father's house for him to pick up his stereo from Nita's house twenty minutes away. A colleague I taught with at Luray Elementary came to me when she saw him leave a motel with a high school student at lunch and told me. She was so angry with me when my brain could not accept it. She deservedly stomped off. After our divorce, a high school student approached me in a Denny's in Mount Jackson, confiding in me that he had slept with her friends in high school. It isn't enough that I was responsible for health care, daycare, homework, and extra-curricular activities. In this fishbowl, any reaction to his actions in court was translated to my children as, "Look what your mother is doing to me."  In most courts, one must prove the other is guilty of the alleged crimes. In Teller County, the father's word was enough.  Much worse, when I had found the courage to press charges, the DA dropped the charges without communicating with me which was against the law in that State.

    A pattern began to evolve and I failed to see it.  For every step my attorney made to defend a motion or an accusation, there would be a retaliatory move. Each time that my children prepared to board a plane to see me, they always arrived at the airport with less than 30 minutes to board and then the children were told that I had purchased stand-by tickets. Upon their return, they would be screamed at for as long as six hours. My daughter and son would cry until they vomited. The verbal abuse would continue until the children went to bed. The descriptions of me left my children with visions that painted my Glass House with photographs of a drunk mom, a mother who did not want them and a hateful woman who left them. My youngest was eight years old when he came to me crying, asking why I did not want him. I told him several times over the following years that I was not ready for a child, but I always wanted him. I never told him that he was a product of intimate abuse.  As time went on the accusations would become more grandiose.

   Despite the increase in parental alienation, I refused to tell the children the truth about their father. How many women had he slept with during our marriage? No one, including their father would know that I knew who and when. I didn't like him to smoke pot, even more, I did not want it in the house with our children.  Yet, it happened. No big deal, except the man was a teacher and football coach. Over the years of our marriage, his mother would ask me if he was abusing me behind closed doors in the way his father and grandfather  had done with her and Grandma. Her stories were excruciating to hear;  the details too close to home and too awful to acknowledge. Looking back, I have come to realize that all of the private father-son talks in the barn could only be the indoctrination of the Holley School of Husbandry. ------Yes, I worry about my sons.

    The first lesson at the hands of the McCurdy Methodist school teacher was that I would never humiliate him again. Our first child was nine months old. We were sitting in a pew at church when I was humiliated and embarrassed by my husband. Despite the heavy snow outside,I left the church and walked home with my baby. When the teacher arrived home, I was told I would never humiliate him again, thrown on the bed and raped. I never trusted him again. Never.  For good reason, this would not be the last time.

      There were several rapes at the end of our marriage. I wore street clothes to bed and slept on the edge. Our sons were both close by in the bedroom next to ours in this small home. If I had yelled and fought back, I feared that the sound of the terror would be traumatic, even worse, what if they had they run into our room and witnessed this act of atrocity?  I could not go through with charges against him at that time. It was not to protect the teacher/football coach. I could only be concerned with the embarrassment, pain and hell that our oldest son would endure as a freshman and sophomore in high school. What would that mean for him?

   I often think of my father and wondered where he got  his wisdom from? My mother kicked my father out when I was six years old. After trying to win her back, he literally walked away. No effort to have joint custody. No effort to save us from her. No efforts to defend himself from her blasphemous accusations. No comments about her. Ever. Dad never knew why he would not fight for us, but he apologized. In some innate, indescribable way, we understood. How he could live each day and be happy without his children in his life would impress upon me the Grace that he had.

    After  my former husband told me to get the "F*^K  out of his house, I made every effort to be the Grace that I witnessed in Dad. I would not speak ill of the man. I would not use my children as pawns.  Divorced, I continued to try to make it work as parental partnership. I would come over every day after I finished teaching and do the things moms do after school.  Drive them to practice, have friends over, do homework and make dinner. I always left minutes before he arrived home which was difficult as it did not leave me time to spend with  my son who was in high school.  I cleaned his carpets, ironed his laundry and made every effort to remain amicable. Months later I  moved back in for the sake of my children. I thought I had learned Grace from my Dad and was successfully taking it a step further.  I discovered that my former husband was still in another relationship. but it wasn't until after his mother admonished me for moving back in. Her painful words were that I deserved this hell since I agreed for her son to continue having his affair w hen we reunited. It was all my fault. This was the last straw and I moved out.

     I remained stubbornly stoic and did not disclose any of my pain or the details with the children. I did not tell them of the threatening letters I received from their grandfather and his wife, or of the promises that I would lose them and everything I owned should I divorce their father. I did not tell them of the many nights after they slept their father found me in a motel that I was trying to hide in or my apartment thirty minutes away in Colorado Springs. I did not tell them that I still could not fight the intimate abuse. An effect I believe now is from Gas-lighting.

    Looking back, I remained mum. I would not be my mother and say bad things about their father as she did about mine. Even if they were true. I refused to play a game where our children would be pawns. I did not want revenge. I did not hate him. I did not condone his actions, but I did not hate him. In fact, I always forgave him. I believed at the time that if altruism was powerful. My mind could not see that this teacher, the football coach who would often say to me that he could be mayor, or say that people loved him was indeed a narcissist. I served as the President of a local chapter of the Virginia Education Association and he relished the idea that we were a powerful couple. I could not accept that these were psychopathic tendencies.

     I continued my quest to "save" my children. The younger two children would call me crying. On one occasion, the eight year old was home alone. It was eleven at night and his father and  his girlfriend had gone to the bar. The second grader did not know where his father could be reached and he was frightened. Once, the child called me from the inside a friends closet crying about what he had witnessed between this girlfriend who was married to a dentist and his father. I was on the phone when the children's dinner plates were thrown across the room by this woman. She went on a rampage andthis grown man who was the father retreated to the young boy's room, yelling at my son to help hold the door shut. In these moments I became distraught. I could not help. I called Social Services. They did absolutely nothing which didn't surprise the Victim's Advocates office. It was common knowledge Bill Schmidt never helped the abused woman or her children. I called the court appointed guardian ad litem, but I didn't know she was friends with the children's father and his girlfriend who was a counselor at the same high school in Woodland Park. The GAL's husband, Mr. Fulks was on the staff at the high school as well. I did not know that my calls to her in her in hopes of helping my children would bring on more hell and punishment for telling me. It was Peggy Fulks, the GAL who shared confidential information that I shared with her concerning charges that were not yet public with the perpetrator.

   I could not see that my fight would be the most painful thing that would ever happen to my three children. I could not know that with each effort to renew a relationship with one of the children, a new story would be created about me.  It used to hurt that my children never asked me if any of it was true. In all fairness, we didn't ask our dad until we were in college or adults. Now they are all adults they don't even tell me what terrible sins I allegedly doing now say anything about question it.  Can they not remember the real me, the mom they have personally experienced?  It can be incredibly painful. I work on understanding and remembering what is was to live with my mother. For in that alone, I can remain in a place of unconditional forgiveness and love.

   The man is my mother. I loved her. I forgave her, always. I walked away from her, too, and in that one act of power, I could find strength to stand above it all and see my part in it. I can also acknowledge that perhaps I should have done exactly what my father had so many years ago.

     My father's wisdom escaped me when I needed it most. I see the patterns of my mother in my former husband.  In my determination to protect my babies, I failed to see that with each attempted intervention, harm would be inflicted.  My silence continues fifteen years later- until this blog which they will not read.  I continue to wait for my children's return. I wait for them to remember who I really am. Though the oldest is thirty-one years old, he too, still does not see --as my twin still could not see--his title and role as Pawn. As long as his father owes me the equity and child support as ordered by the court, he and his siblings will continue to be used and all I can do is choose to sit in Grace as my father had done and wait.

Dear son - my firstborn and treasured child,

    Gazing upon the picture of you and your girlfriend I see sheer happiness and love. Your eyes dance, even in the pouring rain. For the first time in many years, I see the little boy who loves life. I write this letter to you, not to relay my approval, but to hopefully further open the door to your heart and to release all fears of abandonment, release all pain incurred by eroneous misunderstandings and to release all misconceptions of how a loved one behaves toward another. I am not in your daily life enabling me to have these parental discussions with you, maybe in time I will be.
     You have heard many things about me, many of those you are unaware of my knowledge of them. Ah, your mind asks how could I know about them? Your lack of communication, your body language when you have just spent time with certain individuals, your defensiveness on those occasions and the mere fact that you seem to have only one parent and it does not seem to be me. I am exceptionally insightful, perceptive and quite often I am given these truths.

    There is nothing that I can defend or say. You see, to defend myself would be to speak truthfully about individuals which would not only place you in the middle by both parents actions, it would also cause you greater pain than you already are experiencing. To share with you the truths behind my actions would be just as destructive. It is not my intent to ask you choose sides nor is it my intent to place upon you the heavy burden truth that should remain  only between the two individuals that it belongs to.

   My loving son, you are the most compassionate, loving, giving human being. You are always more than fair to others, maybe sometimes to the point you are not fair to yourself. You are a peacemaker. I am sorry to have made peace in your presence to the exclusion of loving myself. I believed that keeping peace at all cost was protecting all three of you children to learn that I really was teaching you to sell yourself out at all costs. Please forgive me.

   Looking back I recollect the days, nights and weekends that I did not see you during the tumultuous times. It was not because I abandoned you or was not there- I was. Your brother and sister were with me always. Holidays, during your games and wrestling matches, before school and after. Each school day I would be with them doing laundry, cooking dinner, assisting with homework and even cleaning the house. My departure from Lovell Gulch was always just before you came home, not out of not wanting to see you, but because of my need to have safe departure and to ensure calm seas for the three of you. I missed you then so terribly. The pain was unbearable prompting me to move back in after the divorce thinking that being a mother was far more important than anything I would have to endure.

   Son, I never left you. I was demanded to leave the first time. Having already found the phone numbers, home addresses and phone bills, I accepted that your father had already moved on and was dating while we were married was not conducive to fighting to stay that horrible night that you overheard his command. So much happened behind closed doors, so much happened outside of your home. It is not something I wish to inflict upon you nor re-live by writing it to you. For so long, I thought you would ask questions so I kept boxes and boxes of evidence of my innocence. I often hoped you would want to know, you would question what you were told.  Now, it doesn't matter.

   You matter - what you know doesn't matter. I trust in you, your love, your Spirit. You see son, I have seen the "knowing" in you. I have witnessed your heart and your ability to love, love yourself and others.  I have felt your Spirit. I have had the honor of knowing that you kept a promise given on a deathbed demonstrating your integrity. You have worked for goals with perserverance, determination and intense focus. You have given to others out of extreme compassion without ever a thought of what was in it for you. You are one of the most honest people I know. I am very blessed to witness your Spirit in life.

     I remember observing you "knowing" things small children do not know, reading the Bible which seemed to be inspired from some need within and I remember so many occasions when you would speak the truth as you experienced it. There were times I vividly remember watching with great awe and shock as I witnessed the verbal lashing you would receive as you stood standing bravely in your truthfulness, the vehemently spoken words thrown at you changing your reality, your knowing.

Having your paradigm or your reality shifted is not an accusation of weakness nor considered a fault. It is an incredible manipulation of the mind. I could see it. I understand it because I lived it myself. To explain it more clearly son, it could be likened to Doublethink and Doublespeak as demonstrated in George Orwell's, 1984. This is not something one is aware of, it is subtle. It is a learned behavior. It follows the belief and statement often used, "A good defense is a good offense." I often blamed myself from not saving you from this experience, yet, with time, I have learned that it was not my place to do so. No more than it was my mother's place to save me from it either. What is important is what I now do as a mother to assist your healing.

As I pray daily with the intention of your healing and strength I pray for courage that you may feel your Soul, know thy Spirit, to feel your heart so full of love, I do not pray with the intention to change your reality. It is my intention to ask your forgiveness as I have not been successful in winning the ability to stay in your life and by doing so, help you to stay true to your soul, your truth.

Dear son, I do not wish to ever hash "he said she said". I do not wish to ever discuss the past and  have never desired to, at least in the past six years. It is why I have always remained silent. As a lawyer you know that the innocent does not need to prove their innocence, the accuser must bear the responsibility of proving one's guilt. I do not need to prove my innocence, and should I have wanted to prove anyone's guilt I had ample boxes of ammunition. Yet, I stayed silent. I still do. You are that important to me.

    Your life, your being is so very important to me. So much so, that as I have written in the beginning that to impart your parents truth upon you would be to impart harsh, unbearable pain. I have lived those truths, it is unnecessary for you to live them. You have your own dark moments to endure and live through. All that I desire is to be your mother. I wish to be allowed to shower you with attention, love, gifts and support. I long to hold you, hug you and share your most joyous moments as well as those which cause you grief. I pine to be let in. I seek to be released from punishment of a crime not committed and above all, again, to be your mother.