Brave Little Gerda Trods On -- My Faith Journey

[Gordie]

And yes I prayed for guidance

Luke 16

[job]

Gerda,

I would remain slow and steady for now. Only respond to questions/requests that are put to you. He wants this divorce, then allow him to lead and you can quietly be preparing yourself behind the scenes.

In my case, I documented everything. I took photos of everything in my home so that I had a record in case I needed to present something during the "fact finding" that takes place along the way.

Try not to get too far ahead of yourself. Take it one day at a time.

[DnJ]

Good morning Gerda.

Yesterday was cold, raining, bleak, and very windy. It stormed through the night and I awoke to sunshine, clear blue skies, and a good looking yard of shortly cut grass cleared of all MLC clippings.

I love a good storm. I was out in it yesterday, well in my shed fixing my lawn tractor - had to replace a broken throttle cable.

The power of a storm, lightning, wind, dark skies, and swirling clouds is very beautiful. It is the total opposite of a clear calm day which also contains so much beauty. Neither of these needs to be ugly for the other to be beautiful.

Our lives are like that. You have a storm building in your life. You can approach it focusing on the darkness and despair or find the beauty and power of the storm, the knowledge that sunny days will follow.

The chaos a storm brings will blow things around - I had to recover my three garbage cans and contents and go on a hunt for two of the lids. Loose things in your life will get blown around, do not worry you will pick them up later. Find your solid footing, those anchors in your life, and stand strong against the chaos.

Find acceptance, fighting an inevitable storm will leave you drenched, cold, tired, and wore out. You may be surprised at the cleanising that will happen after a storm, I am sure your own grass has enough clippings in it, let go and let them blow away.


Yes I have sought answers from God. I believe He exists in each and every one of us, it is just a matter of listening within and to others to hear him.

Since I never know where that next bit of information will come from I have listened to all sources, even the angry divorced unforgiving people at work who just need to pass on their own solutions to their problems. They do not listen well and have a very focused and bitter outlook.

However, after 9 months and my growing outlook on life a few have slowly moved away from their bitterness. One guy in paticular told me last week that he really enjoys talking with me, it is like therapy. Anyways that’s a different topic.

I very much want to only speak the truth when pressed. What is bothering me is that it seems like I have to push the whole thing before pressed. It seems like I have to go on the offensive and take the lead.

I agree in speaking the truth when pressed. The choice to remain silent and say nothing is your’s, I think you would have less regrets with the truth than with silence, no matter what the outcome - you will have done your best.

I think I understand what you mean when you feel you need to take the lead and push before H will press you to give you that opportunity to respond. It is a limbo state waiting for the next volley from H, very disconcerting for you. Remember you do not have to lead this, you can wait a bit, just be prepared. However, if you feel - then wait a bit until - you believe you should push and lead things along. And then ask for more advice. Right now you are too unsure so sitting and waiting for a solution is a good plan (job really does have good advice ).

And what does it mean to protect my kids? Is that only about custody? And am I positive that the best thing for them is my sole custody? I feel like it is but how do I know that this will plant some seed of confusion about me keeping them from him, even if I say he can visit everyday. Does protecting them mean fighting to keep this house, which seems to be my H's entire obsession now, to access the equity in it and to end my "control" of him in my refusal to sell it?

Protecting kids. I used it as a blanket in term for everything under its umbrella. Custody, raising them, moral values, financial consideration, enjoyment with life, friends, school, learning to drive, their love for their parents, their feelings, their right to their feelings, and so on. Protect their childhood! You are the sane one, to the best of your abilities ensure they get the best childhood they will have.

So protecting does not mean you have to fight to keep you current house - it does mean you fight to give your children a home.

Custody. A difficult topic. Is sole custody with you best? No, best would be that loving family - H, you, and kids - you need to do the next best thing. Just being accurate. Since H is no longer looking to work towards that view of family and best, you need to figure out what to do.

Also there are laws to help protect kids and parents, and each of their rights.

The seeds of confusion can be overcome by talking to your kids. Being open, honest, and age appropriate. One thing is the idea of letting him visit them everyday if you had sole custody. That is very gracious and would probably not be return if H had sole custody, however to a large extent it is the child’s choice to visit or not. You do not facilitate their relationship with H, your job is not to distroy it. You listen and encourage them.

My view on your custody issue is to talk to your L and follow their advice. You said L thought you had a good case for sole custody, there are reasons for that. Pursuing sole custody does not mean you will achieve it, you may get less - it is probably better than starting with 50/50 after what H initially offered.

When I read about H wanting to sell house, run away with OW, or maybe not work, no plan on where to live, or if you are involved or not - I am sure you can see the confusion and crazy. That house and his idea of all the equity sure is a bee in his bonnet.

Gerda, see a finical planner and see what your options are (I think you already have if so sorry). Find out what you can and cannot achieve. Maybe there is a way to hold in to your house, if you want too.

I am jumping ahead but this is what is making me crazy, my mind going over and over all the things I will have to do in the months to come, and what I will say and when I have to say it.

Yep, jumping ahead. However, I like that you are thinking and looking at becoming prepared. I believe that a lot of this will not come to pass, the problem is we don’t know which parts those are.

The future is, thankfully, unknown and occluded from us. Let it unfold and accept that things are going to happen. Your H may lie, get angry, and cause a lot of stress - you can and will weather that storm.

Don’t fear the darkness, it is the herald of upcoming bright days.

Be the best you will be.

DnJ

[Gerda]

Gordie, thank you for replying. I can't hire a very good lawyer or any lawyer at all. This week for example I am many thousands of dollars short of paying the mortgage.

How did your lawyer do that? Just continue to say no? The lawyer I met with scared me. He said the judge will get angry with me if I keep refusing to compromise. But I figure I can at least try for a while, they are not going to force anything in the first conferences.

The lawyer told me I should ask for temporary custody now too. I am not sure about that but I decided that I am going to ask for a psychiatric evaluation at the first conference. I am going to show some of his insane e-mails and mention is alcoholism as well as the times he took money from my daughter's wallet and never gave it back. But I am planning to say that I do not want this divorce and that I believe his mental health crisis causes even his decision to divorce to be in question, let alone all the decisions about finance and the children. I don't know if the judge will listen but that was my plan. It is not what my lawyer advised but it did come out of a conversation with a priest I am close to, and after that conversation I felt peace and strength in a way I haven't for a long while. This morning I still woke up like a battery on fire but I will keep reaching for peace.

Luke 16. Very very difficult passage. I can't figure out how you are interpreting it here. I want to know more.

[Gerda]

Job, DnJ, Gordie, a million thanks.

One thing I wonder --

I will have to say many things about him even at the first conference in order to keep my kids from having to live with him. I hate to say these things about him and fuel his hatred of me. I fear that once I say all those things, he will be justified in hating me. I know that sounds crazy, since I am not lying about anything, just saying the truth, but it will be in order to keep him from taking the kids and hopefully to not allow any custody. I think it is very unhealthy for the kids to be around him at all though I can't tell what is worse. But just that he will see it as my stealing the kids from him, and it will drive him further.

But I think what I hear from all of you is that it doesn't matter, because while he is like this, I can't do anything that will change him, and once he is not like this (if that day ever comes), he will understand that he was wrong.

Is that what you mean?

[Gerda]

DnJ, I will write more later, but as ever I want to thank you for the gift of your posts.

I actually visited your thread and wrote a post that disappeared and I was already such a mess that I couldn't write it again. It was about how unlikely it is that the OM would ever last, even if they married.

This week I am many thousands of dollars short for the mortgage, and I am in deep trouble on many other financial fronts. I can't afford a lawyer or even an accountant right now, and my biz taxes are due in one week. I feel like I can gather the strength and courage to walk this other path with my H but the financial problems are starting to push my head under that water. Every accountant I spoke with quoted a minimum of $1500 and I don't even have $15....

[DnJ]

Gerda - just a quick stop for lunch and thought I’d check in on you.

But I think what I hear from all of you is that it doesn't matter, because while he is like this, I can't do anything that will change him, and once he is not like this (if that day ever comes), he will understand that he was wrong.

Is that what you mean?

Yep, that is a good summary.

Save yourself and kids, that is your primary and most important goal. Do it in the most compassionate and loving way you can, just do not sacrifice reaching your goal - don’t get stuck.

(((Gerda)))

[Gerda]

Oh DnJ, thank you for checking in.

I wonder what you will think of this. I sent my H a note today, tried to call him but he didn't answer, because I came home to another notice from his L already calling for a conference at the court though I haven't even answered the first notice yet.

And also in the mail was a tax warrant against me for a very huge sum from one of my tax problems that I haven't been able to solve.

So I wrote to my H a note saying that I did not want a D, it was his project entirely, but if he was going to undertake it, he needed to find another place to stay, as it was not possible for me to live through this nightmare with him here. Here is the reply I just got. (I didn't say anything about it serving him alone, in fact I implied that it was not good for him, me or the kids.)

I respect your way of experiencing and interpreting what’s happening as "a nightmare” and as a “project” of my own that serves me and only me. I couldn’t disagree with your interpretation more.

I feel not that I am leaving but that I have been (unbeknownst to you) slowly-surely-unconscously compelled by you to leave, compelled by you, in other words, first, to annihilate my own highest selfhood; secondly, to annihilate my own image of the future: and, third, annihilate my own image what it means to be a father, husband, and an authentic equal (versus an emissary) in the quotidian affairs of homemaking.

In any case, I cannot go to the (rental house) because I am writing prolifically now and I need access to first-rate library collections. I need access to (named the top universities in our city). (Occasionally -- named the top universities in cities within 4 hours of us — can work.)

Secondly, I have a deep abiding primordial interest — a householder interest that is uniquely my own and different from yours — to be a real (versus a ghost) father to D and S, and it is my top priority to create the sort of reality that can be conducive to manifesting a condition of real versus ghosty fatherhood, love.

[Gerda]

And five minutes later I just got this one. The amazing thing is that the last line is EXACTLY how I am living and exactly what I have an idea about, but I guess I had better not say that.

For the record, and with all respect and love, it is because we have not been able to agree, and it is because I now find my self in extremes of penury and sub-poverty, and it is because I cannot but experience myself around you as occupying not the roles of equal spouse and partner but the roles of being an emissary, a dependent, an inferior not to a wife but to an executor, a mother, a landlord — it is because I cannot for the life of me get from under the wheel of these experiences of dependency and inferiority and servility while sharing a home with you and while "negotiating" with life with you that I hired a lawyer. We are again at a point where you see it your way and I see it entirely in another way and I have had to finally come to peace with that fundamental dissonance and go at it another way than the way that we have been going at it for decades. I am sorry for it, indeed, and I love you in a deep fashion: but you have no idea, nor could you have an idea what it might feel like to live in an image of life that is not an image of one's own making, or at least of one's own authentically equal co-making.

[DnJ]

Gerda - I love what you wrote. With the second notice from his L, you said exactly what needed to be said. It is his project, he knows where you stand.

I read what he wrote a couple of times. I now have a headache and am confused. I even had to look up quotidian. If one takes the time to cypher through all the big words you can see some of his thinking, and the confusion.

And five minutes later I just got this one. The amazing thing is that the last line is EXACTLY how I am living and exactly what I have an idea about, but I guess I had better not say that.

This reminded me of something.

It looks like you are most definitely heading for a conflict with H. “I had better not say that” is really good advice from yourself.

Let him talk and send notes, you document, keep records, and say little. Hold your information close to your chest, keep it for later.

Gerda, I understand you have financial problems. However, I strongly urge you to hire a lawyer for this. Get a loan, find the money, whatever it takes, get a lawyer representing your side - I think you are going to need one.

Show your L the documents and tell him what has been going on. He will give you the legal viewpoint you are going to require.

I was astounded by all the legal possibilities during W’s and my separation - I had no idea of all the different things people could do - waive rights, custody, pension, house, accounts, alimony, and so. You can settle on the value of the house and items, you can go 50/50 or make your own split.

I think your H is looking for “his share” and not wanting to settle things amicable. Don’t give up hope, he may want something bad enough to give other things in return - You most assuredly need a lawyer for this.

Do not sign anything until your L has looked it over.

Gerda, I’m very proud of you. You posts show strength and clear thinking. After BD4 you have quickly picked yourself up, dusted off, and what looks like to me - rolled up your sleeves to do what you need to do.

Hang in there girl, you’re doing great.

DnJ