Easter

It's early on Easter morning, almost 2 am.  This is a time of year that I love dearly.  I love to reflect on the Savior's life, his lessons, and his love. This season brings to mind the greatest sacrifice ever made for mankind.  By willingly submitting to everything that was asked, Christ paid the price I will never be able to even remotely come close to.  He paid for every mistake I will ever make, every pain I will ever complain about and every situation that causes me to mummer against the Father.  He paid what can never be repaid.  Only received and used and shared.

I have been reflecting on receiving help today.  A lot.  I am not very good at asking for, let alone accepting help.  I am strong enough, smart enough, dense enough, or stupid enough to make it on my own.  At least that's what I tell myself.  The place I sit now has shown me how very dense and stupid I can be.  Eric is in jail, for crimes no one but the judge thinks he is capable of committing.  Crimes that my children dreamed up to get to their own ends.  I could go on about that, and I probably will in the future, but for today, he is simply gone.  I need him.  I have needed him for every thing I am for the last 10 years.  He has shielded me from my own frailties and weakness and made sure that my children and I were taken care of.  It wasn't always a walk in the park, but he was by my side every step.  Without him, I need help.  HELP.

How do you go about asking for help when all your life you have avoided it?  I am sitting here writing this at a kitchen table not my own, in a home not my own, where my children and I will sleep until we can find a place of our own.  I don't know how long we will be without our own home, and I've called us homeless, but, we are not destitute.  I have so many people that have said "we love you, let us help".  Let us help.  I have had to swallow what shreds of pride I've been holding onto.  It's not easy, and it hurts, a lot.  But as with the Savior, who offered us the help we need to get home, what good is that offer if we foolishly believe we can do it alone?  I need my friends right now, more than even I know.  I need to let them help me because I simply can't do this on my own.  I can't.

This Easter, the gift the Savior offers each of us is so HUGE to me.  He is offering us the help we need, if we know it or not, to get home.  Just as I am homeless without my friends who love me right now, in this very moment, so too will I be homeless forever if I don't willingly take the Savior's help.  It's a concept I thought I knew and understood.  I was so very wrong.

In the midst of my unimaginable life, with all scary nightmarish things that I seem destine to wade in the midst of, I know this:  I am not alone, I just need to let go of pride, and accept the offer of  help and love.  He will walk with me, Eric will come out the other end of this horror, and we will go on, hand in hand, with the Savior guiding us, to our forever.   This is what Easter means to me this year.  I am so humbled to know that Christ loves me enough to hold out his hand to me, even when in my arrogance I don't reach back.  He never has left me alone.  The only way I will ever be able to thank him, is to take his outstretched hand, and follow him home. Because in the end, being thankful for something is to use it for what it was meant for, not just view it as a pretty picture.

Happy Easter,

endings

 This was my undoing today. This simple, stupid, family dinner table.  I couldn't get the legs off of it to move.  It was like a slap in the face, telling me I'm not good enough to do this.  It's not been my job to break apart furniture for 10 years.  It's been Eric's.  Eric's job to make sure I don't fall apart, don't lift things I shouldn't,  Eric's job to move the heavy stuff while I pack and organize and chase kids and run the home.  AND HE'S NOT HERE!  I am so damn mad at this!  I am so mad that my children would do this to our family.  Mad that the justice system only works if you have money. Mad that I can't fix any of this.  I have never felt so helpless in my entire life.  I have always known what to do, who to call, what had to be done.  If it weren't for some amazing friends I have made in the last 6 months, my children and I would be living in our car.  I am not exaggerating.  Simply stating the facts.

I don't know what we are going to do.  One year lock up for him, and every day my soul dies.  He hasn't called us now for 3 days.  I don't know why.  I need to hear him, even if it's only for a few moments a day.  I need to know he is okay, and get some strength from him.  I need him.  And I need to get on with things without him.

I am so intensely upset at my girls.  I hate to even seen pictures of them.  I sold every piece of funitre that I have ever bought for them,when we land, I'll start over and buy things without the taint of memory.    I want to have never met their father.  I want to never have given birth to them.  And yet I want them back here, back inside my hug, where my children all belong.  I love them and hate them with such fierceness that it tears me apart with every beat of my heart.  How do you reconcile your heart to hate and love?  How does a mother admit to the fact that she wishes she had never had some of her children.

My dear, sweet husband is subjected to things that I don't even want to think about, and he will have to complete therapy that includes him "admitting" that he did something to them to please the judge.  What a joke.  I was so hoping that he could serve the time close to me, so I could see him, and it turns out, that won't happen now.  I worry about him, but he is amazingly strong.  I shame him by thinking him weak.  He is such a strong man with an amazing spirit.  I am so blessed he is mine, and he is willing to still love me even after K and E have done this.  He is willing to pray for them, and hope that one day they make right what they have hurt and come back to our family. . He has prayed for them even when I couldn't speak their names.

We are leaving this house that has been our home for almost 5 years tomorrow.  We will be homeless, but we have a place to land until we find our feet.  I have never been this destitute.  It's a bitter pill to take, but I know that we are forever in the Lord's hands.  I may not see where we are headed, but he does.

Fallout

Yesterday the foot was taken off the landmine that has been haunting our family for the last almost 2 years.  Eric was sentenced to 365 days in jail, and 10 years on the sex offenders registry for the lies that my oldest children dreamed up.  I listened as E read her emotional,and completely made up letter to the judge.  She describes things that never happened, in no detail, that are completely different from what she first told her case worker all those months ago.  The judge didn't even bother to note the inconsistency of the story, and the joke of a public defender didn't bother to point it out either.

I don't know how to go on.  Eric is the half of me that holds all the broken messy bits together.  He is the reason that I am even remotely sane and functional.  He is gone.  My older children are dead to me.  I want nothing to do with them, right now that means forever.  But my momma heart knows that if they will just make things right, my family can be whole.

I know that the Lord has his hand in this, that this is part of a bigger picture that I cannot see.  But I just want my soul back.  I need him more than I need oxygen.  I'm terrified for him, as he is now considered a child molester.  All for simply trying to love my children.  I guess that my ex's genes were to much to over come,  Some decisions haunt you for the rest of your life. I regret ever meeting Kyle Harvey, let alone marrying and having children with him.  Eric did nothing to deserve this.  NOTHING!

I'm lost, and alone, and so frightened.  I have survived these last 2 years with him holding me together.  I'm so afraid for him, he is a kind, sweet man who is in the darkest of places with the meanest of humankind.  I worry for him every second.

My life is destroyed, the devastation from the evil that i brought into this world has seen to that.  I have no home, no income, no hope.  I can only cling to the last thin shred of my faith that the Lord will keep us safe, because heavens knows I can't.