Little Black Rain Cloud

I'm just a little black rain cloud

Hovering under the honey tree

I'm only a little black rain cloud

Pay no attention to little me

Oh, everyone knows that a rain cloud

Never eats honey, no, not a nip

I'm just floating around over the ground

Wonderin' where I will drip

What a busy, amazing week and a beautiful weekend. The end of the school year, graduation, my sister's wedding, all filling up my life with so many things to be grateful for and so many people to love. All around me are signs and wonders of God's love for me and my family, signs of His hand in my life, signs that He is there, is watching over us, is going to make everything okay. It's great, grand, and wonderful.

And all weekend, a black cloud hovered over me, squashing my potential happiness and peace and joy, reminding me that this weekend will end, that everyone will go home, that I will enter real life again where he will be there waiting to pounce, waiting to steal any chance at hope or healing from my children and me. So melodramatic, so frustratingly, maddeningly true.

You see, I am still connected to him. I'm not sure if it's a residual effect from being married to him for 13 years and our spirits are even still intertwined, or if it's the fact that we are still sealed in an eternal marriage, or if it's just my paranoia from being traumatized by him over and over again, but I can still sense when he's on one. I had a panic attack during my sister's endowment session because I was feeling so anxious about not having my children with me and not having my phone. I prayed and gave them to God and calmed down after a little while, but sure enough, as soon as I got changed and checked my phone, I had a voicemail from the Sheriff that the ex had been calling him demanding to have the children. The Sheriff will not take them from me unless they are deemed unsafe in my possession, and the ex having them would be unsafe, but this needs to stop. He needs to stop. 

I can feel him everywhere, all the time. He is so susceptible to the adversary and so each and every time I have a possibility of feeling peace or hope or contentment, the devil will influence the ex to destroy that for me. I must get to a place where, no matter what he chooses to do, I can still feel peace. I got there, for a while. I really did. And he sensed it and so did something even worse to pull me back down again. Sometimes, I can get to a space where I remember that the ex is just a sick man who needs help, that he is God's son, too. But then he pulls some horrific stunt and I am left just trying to survive him and what he is doing to myself and our children.

I pray every day that he will just go away. For a time, he stated he wanted nothing to do with me or the children, that he relinquished all parental rights and wanted to just start over with his own life. He even had his lawyer give an official statement to my lawyer about it. I knew it was an empty threat, but oh how I hoped he would finally actually do something he said he would do. Of course, a few days later, he changed his mind. Such an unstable mind as his is incapable of following through on something that might actually benefit someone else. How horrid, that I truly feel my children would be better off with no relationship at all with their father than a relationship with such an unhealthy one.

When this first started, when I first served him the papers, I knew he'd flip out a little bit. I wouldn't have divorced him if he was healthy and stable. I knew there would be some repercussions. But after the first couple of months, after we'd agreed on things and signed the papers, I had such hopes of all of us healing, of him becoming healthier without our relationship in the way to poison each other. I had such hopes of him actually building a solid relationship with his kids, of them wanting to spend time with him, of me not having to worry about them in his care, and feeling happy that they got to spend time with their dad.

Now, I cringe every time I get a text or phone call from our mediation contact. I have to decide whether or not to force the kids to see him (only supervised at this point), because they do not want to see him at all. It's not as if they're just being brats. That's how his family seems to see them, just rude kids who are disrespectful to their father. His family has only ever seen him on his best behavior, when he's putting on the show of how victimized he is. They've never seen the anger, the outbursts. But they have seen the oppressive, obsessive nature of him and felt its overwhelming, traumatizing effects even on themselves; they have seen him medicated beyond ability to function; they have seen the multiple smashed vehicles and multiple arrests; and yet they are still confused about why the kids do not want to give him a hug. They still shake their heads that the kids don't want to speak to him and don't understand why the kids fear his emotional intensity. Somehow, they seem to wonder why the children do not trust their father.

But for the kids, whenever they have to see him, they experience full on panic attacks and we have to prep, we have to breathe, we have to go over our safety plans and reiterate that other people will be there to protect them from him if he tries to do anything they don't feel comfortable with (even though that's not always true). The thing is, they don't even feel comfortable in the same building as him, let alone the same room.

If only he would just go away.

Even still, I have to keep hope alive. I have to hold on to those glimmers of faith and courage that refuse to die inside of me. I have to keep turning my eyes upward, moving my feet forward. I have to hold on. I have to hope that he will get the help he needs, that I will learn to disconnect from him and have my own peace, regardless of his attempts to destroy. I have to keep going. It will get better. This will end. It has to.

I will have joy as exceeding as was--is--my pain.

As long as I hold on.

As long as I don't give up.

The kids and I will all become better for this. We will use this trial to change our worlds for the better. We will be more courageous and more faithful and more powerful than we would have otherwise been.

This must happen.

All of us will take the attempts to destroy, and we will create something indestructible from it instead. The more he throws at us, the more we will build,

until we have so much courage, we will laugh at fear, 

until we have so much faith, we will shine with light and truth,

until we have such strong wings, we will soar forever.