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Gerda,

Isn’t this place wonderful? To think that a few words from someone you don’t know far away can bring comfort.

And for me.......to learn I’m admired by you. Thank you!

And you watched a bit of Gavin and Stacie yes, that’s where James Corden started. He co wrote the series. He’s not very popular in the UK as he’s thought of as a bit of a di*k.

But he’s made it big in the US.....and the Brits are notorious for bringing people down, so may be the real reason he’s not liked!

Last edited by Westo; 08/28/19 09:37 AM.
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Garda, thanks for spreading cheer to me as well as the poem. Times like those are difficult, but friends like you definitely help.

Should you ever organize a meeting of the minds ove tea, coffee, beer, or wine, please count me in.

And Westo, I have heard he's kind of the same here.


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HER DIVORCE IS FINAL...8/18/17
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Good Morning Gerda

My romanticized vision of you and moonlit beaches leaned towards a woman arguing with God, digging her nail into the dirt, baring her soul and pain. Giving it over to God.

It is difficult, probably impossible, to hear His word when we are all riled up. Frothy and turbulent waters need to become calm. When one is calm, one can hear, one can listen. That is why it is wonderful to see you getting it out of you.

Bravery is much better than Horror or Crucification. On September 29, feel free to send you ghosts over to me for a visit, I’ll scare them. smile

And that is really the thing about it. They are your ghosts. You control them. You can send them away, and you can call them back for processing at a more convenient time. Can’t banish them forever, need to accept them at some point.

Write, on your calendar, in brackets under Bravery - Just Business. A small step in uncoupling feelings from actions. DnJ-style smile . You’ll see those words for the next month, and it will get inside your head. And Ghostbusters is one of my favourite films.

Originally Posted by Gerda
P.S. This post was edited by Gerda. Reason -- she realized, yes, she is still scared of the ghosts. Still in denial. Still do not understand what God is allowing or why.

(((Gerda)))

Find the calm water. Answers are there and will present themselves.

DnJ


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I owe you all replies, Grace, SBJ, DnJ, Westo, but I am posting this morning just because I am really low. I am really battling spiritually because I do not want to give up standing but I have been struggling so much with my loneliness and my disbelief that God is allowing this to go on for so long and that now it has become so brutal. And honestly I just really want to love a man again, and to have a man love me even just a little, like for a week. : )

I also stupidly looked up H on the internet last night. His photos that he has posted just on his work profile and places like that are SO weird. He looks terrible and crazy, but he posted these as his best photos. A few years ago he wrote me, furious, about our AirB listing, where there was this beautiful happy family photo,but in which he weighed maybe 80 pounds more than he does now. He was so angry, I replaced it with a photo of me setting D's birthday cake in front of her, a very sweet photo of just us two!

But anyway I have to pay him each month on the 1st, today is the last payment on our agreement and they are trying to get me to keep paying until trial/settlement but I am totally out of money so I will be saying no, but it's going to be so ugly. I have been dreading it -- ye olde ghost, DnJ. Today is the 1st and I was going to PayPal him by tonight, was waiting til last minute obviously because I am so broke. And I ended up having to pay $500 in EZPass violations because before I gave him the car I checked to see if there was any money I owed on tolls, I had taken down the EZ Pass when I realized he was using it with no card attached to it anymore, and the tag was in my name. Well, he owed $550 in violations and SEVEN THOUSAND DOLLARS IN PENALTIES! EZ Pass told me that I could pay the whole thing and ask for courtesy to waive the fees this time and turn in the tag, so I did, so that I could give him the car with nothing in my name anymore, and no risk of me owing 7K. It was the last bit of money I had for summer spending. He was furious that I handled it and kept insisting the tag was in his name -- talk about delusional! Just the name of a tag that is clearly in my name on the bill is a cause for anger and insisting that I am wrong!

He is also picking up D today so I was a little worried about it being the money day and if he would be crazy around her. And you recall, last time I was late with the payment because he insisted on the insanely expensive appraiser, he took me to court for contempt of court while I was out of town with the kids. (My L went for me.) He must have spent 2K on a lawyer to make me pay 1500. The judge was furious with him for wasting her time but gave me one week to pay the rest, and I did. But again, the MLC mind does not see reality. As you will see below, he actually thought that it worked well the last time he did that, and that the judge will support him! I only wrote back, "Today is Sept 1. The payment is due today," And he wrote back, "Sept 1 started at midnight." WOWOWOWOWWOW But it just all makes me feel so hopeless and low about the future of my family. I know what everyone here will say but today I just need a hug. I periodically just get so sad that he hates me so much and it all seems so unfair, even though I know it is MLC and the man I knew is not there right now. I am just reeling from the betrayal this week. So just send me some hugs please. I know al the things I am supposed to be thinking. I just want to cry on your shoulders.

Gerds (he uses my shortest cutest nickname), I never got paid the $2500. What you obviously want is another emergency court date Tuesday...in which you will yet again be seen for the truth of what you are: a recalcitrant person, flagrantly living in impunity, while in violation of no less than four court orders..if this path is one you wish to follow then this is the path I will happily follow.

While you (just as you always have) have your own esoteric, invidualized clock, calandar and map that you alone bullishly live by, the world (including the court and all of us ordinary citizens) humbly obediently shares its own ordinary clock and a calandar and map... and if you really believe the ordinary humble world (and all of its ordinary humble citizens) are going to yet again be bullied to get in joint with that bullish clock, calandar and map that you alone establish as your own..if this is yet again what you wish us and the court to believe, then that belief will be yours.

I will see you in court Tuesday.

Your willful, fractious and recalcitrant days of bullishly arrogantly flipping the proverbial "f-you" finger to the world's and the court's clocks, calandars and maps are finished. At the end of it all, I trust that we will all miraculously and pleasantly discover -- after a just and honorable war -- that what's humbly shared by the ordinary whole-wide world doesn't simply bullishly get reduced to what uniquely belongs to a defiant despot.

If Justice --and Love -- finally beget anything for the world, it is that "discovery" and no other "discovery" that Justice and Love finally beget for the world: that one person's extraordinarily bullish ways do not simply become the ways of an ordinary world and its ordinary citizens.

See you Tuesday in court.

-H

Last edited by Gerda; 09/01/19 02:20 PM.

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(((Gerda)))

(((Gerda)))

(((Gerda)))

It’s Sunday afternoon here and I’m drinking a nice cup of tea and sending you big cwtches.

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(((Gerda)))

You are allowed to weep upon our shoulders.

Please feel cared for in these darkest of times as virtual arms hold you up as you regain your strength against the pull of collapse.

DnJ


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(((Gerda))

You are suffering, and it breaks my heart. I'm so sorry.

I wanted to just share my viewpoint on standing. I believe in standing. I believe God wants us to stand to wait for him to sort things out, not necessarily to stand only to see if we can be reunited with our spouse. As you know, things don't always sort out the way we think they will or should or want to.

God told me to wait for many months, until one day, very recently, I stopped hearing it. As you know, I am proceeding with divorce, because H made his choice. God isn't telling me to wait anymore because it's time for me to follow another path he is leading me on. None of us knows whether God will reunite us with our spouses, but I ask you:

Are you listening to God's instructions on following the path he has for you?

Do not despair. HE is with you, and has his arms open to comfort you. Mine are too.

(((Gerda)))

Grace


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Hey Gerda.

((HUGS)))

I'm sorry you are going through this. I'm sorry he is so mean. I know how you feel. I don't have much to add, but just wanted to send hugs your way.

I also understand wanting to stand and also not standing.

Just my opinion, but I'm sure God will be okay with whatever decision that you make. I believe that God would want Gerda to do what is best for Gerda and do what makes Gerda happy.

I also believe that there is no right or wrong answer. I stood for a long time until XW remarried and made the decision for me. Would I still be standing? I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not. Again, there is no right or wrong answer.

I also understand about wanting to love and be loved.

Please don't believe all of the garbage he spews. I know it is easier said than done, but he's on a crazy train right now and is nowhere near the person you knew.

(((ANOTHER HUG)))

Take care.

Tad


Last edited by tadpole1025; 09/02/19 03:09 AM.

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Westo, thank you for the THREE hugs, they were very comforting, as was the tea with cream and scones.

Grace -- This is a big conversation but unfortunately I do not trust anymore that I am hearing what God wants. For example -- oftentimes I feel that when God wants me to understand something, He will tell me twice. And a few years back on a day that I was really low, I was in a store with my daughter, sadly looking down as we went up an escalator holding hands. And something suddenly made me look up just as we were passing a photograph of the little stone bridge where H proposed in a big park in my city. It was a big deal, that bridge, because we went to that same place every year since our first date. So I looked up and saw that photo and felt this tentative peace. And then I went home and there was a flyer in the mail for something, and on one side was a huge photo of the same bridge! So I felt that it was God speaking to me, and I kept the flyer in my top drawer and still have it. And to be clear, this is not a bridge that one sees all the time or that is constantly in flyers. So it was unusual to see it once in a day, let alone twice.

Well, yesterday I had to bring D10 to H because I asked him for a later start time so she could see some cousins who were coming through town. So I had to bring her way out to wear he lives on the train, and I asked if he could come down to get her at the gate so I wouldn't have to pay again. But it turned out that that station didn't have a way back in, so I had to cross over and pay again and go to other side. All of this is just to point out how many things had to happen for what happened then -- the train finally pulls up, and there are ads on the side of all the cars, and the one that stopped right in front of me was -- a huge image of that bridge.

I was literally paralyzed. I just gasped. And then I got in the train and just felt like that message from God was plastered to my back, and when I got to my station, I stopped and stared at it til the train pulled away.

And the thing is, I don't know what anyone else is hearing, but I really don't think God would ever tell us to stop standing. I mean, I think He will be with us through anything and everything, and that if we divorce and remarry, he will make something out of that too. But I think the plan that keeps us closest to Him is to be as we were when we came to him, as Paul says. I am not saying that your D and mine are not necessary as civil financial transactions to protect us, clearly they are; but as far as the spiritual side of marriage, I don't think God would encourage us to end that. I believe that we are called to marry once. But in my faith, annulment is a real thing -- and I wasn't even really married in the Catholic Church, so I have been counseled many times to get an annulment and be free to marry for what would be considered the first time! But something blocks me from believing that.

But I also know that H might never come back and that God might have a totally different plan for me. So I am trying not to make any decision for myself but just to wait to see what God does. I don't know that I can base my whole life on what feel like messages. I honestly don't think we ever know exactly what God is saying, and that we can only have confidence that his plan will be working even when we choose the "wrong" path. Father Arseny always comes to mind, or other long-sufferers. God doesn't fix everything or carve out a peaceful path for all of us. Hardly. That can't be the point of faith or no wars, disease or children dying or any of the other horrible things that happen would allow us to still have faith at all. I certainly don't think that I get to trade my faith for a happy life, I am sure it's not transactional.

But your question is probably at the route of my current suffering. I feel a little bit mad at God if he is calling me to stand for "nothing." I am still thinking on some level that this is transactional, and that since I did my part, if he wants me to do more or pray in another way or, horror of horrors, if He is testing me, well, I am ready to fail because it's not fair.

Which leads us to Tad's post -- first of all, thank you so much for your extremely sweet message. It really really hit me, and shows that you have such a good heart and know just what to say. The only part I am not sure about is what I was saying above -- because when you have a strong faith, you know that God does not actually want you to be happy but holy. Not that holiness is a misery, but that it's not really based on what is happening in this world, it's based on a peace that comes when you are really connected to God, and this could come even when you are going through what we all are going through -- or even when you are in a war or being crucified upside down! That kind of happiness is not something explainable, it's just a grace. I get glimpses of this but my current crisis is because I don't want to love God that much. I am very focused on my current circumstances and how the whole trajectory of my life and my kids' lives is not what I wanted. I am in some kind of denial and fighting my reality. I feel separated from God in that way, but I don't have the faith or strength to ask Him to pull me back.

Which leads us to DnJ, and the arms lifting you when you collapse -- and my deep gratitude for that!

XO to you all.

Last edited by Gerda; 09/02/19 05:03 PM.

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Gerda,

I am sorry that your h is still monstering, but I want to offer you just a wee bit of advice. From this day forward, any time you have to pay for something or provide him w/information about something, i.e., for example the EZ Pass tag, take a photo of the items. That way, if your h is acting like a mule, just pull up the photo and send it to him if the items are in your name. Then, if he's got an issue, he can stick it where the sun don't shine.

As for the date of September 1st being the day that you send him money...true, at the strike of midnight, August 31st rolls into September 1st...but that doesn't mean you have to get up at 12:01 a.m. and send him money...you have the full 24 hours to do so. Your h is attempting to bully you and scare you into doing what he wants. He knows that he can get away w/it. I might be wrong, but you can't usually schedule court dates over a weekend or a holiday weekend.

Since it appears that you are having a difficult time w/your cash flow, have you given any thought to filing for bankruptcy? I realize that this is not something you want to think about, but it might help you w/some of those bills, etc. that keep hounding you.

I know things look very bleak at the moment, but you've got to stay strong and not allow this man to scare you and beat you down.

If you ever notice, when we have terrible natural disasters, God tears everything down to the ground and then allows us to rebuild. When this happens, generally the towns and cities come back even better than before. This happens w/some marriages. I'm not sure that this will happen w/yours because of all the damage he has created. It's okay to stand for marriage, but it's not okay to stand for abuse and manipulation. Gerda, I'm going to be perfectly honest w/you, your h is not going to go away quietly. He strikes me as someone who is going to bully/manipulate you even if you file for divorce and it is granted. There are some that you can't please no matter what. Do the best you can when dealing w/him, but I would try to refrain from as much contact w/him as possible.


Sit quietly, the answers will reveal themselves when you least expect them to.
The past is gone, the present is a gift and you need to focus on today, allow the future to reveal itself when it is ready.
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