The Drawing Power of God

Because I do not mention God in every entry does not mean his presence is not always there. It is. He has sustained me in ways I cannot fathom. When I give Ron credit, I am crediting God for placing Ron in my life. Please know that!

I accepted Christ as my Savior as a child, but as a child, time is meaningless. I did not have role models. My parents did not go to church until we moved to Houston and then going to church meant working at church - fulfilling roles - doing the jobs assigned. Going to church never meant worship. Every church had a myriad of things wrong with it. Every staff member, like every friend, was perfect until they were not.

I left home as soon as I could. I left church right after. I was rebellious. But God was not nearly as finished with me as I was with him. I knew something was desperately wrong. I was empty. And as much as I wanted to escape my parents, I was pulled to them like the old proverbial moth to a flame. They were going to Tallowood, so I decided to go there too.

An amazing thing happened. During the invitation, I felt the God's draw. Now the only way to respond that I knew of was to walk the aisle but I became physically ill. Should I go despite the strong desire to be sick or should I stay in my seat. I felt the drawing. I had to go despite the physical discomfort. As soon as I started to walk, the physical discomfort left and a renewed life began. A time of rededication. A time of yearning, of learning, of surrender. I understood what Paul meant when he talked about the carnal man and the new man. In this period, I became active in the singles department. I met other young people who loved the Lord. I met Ron. In my mind, the two events are intertwined -- meeting Ron and surrender to Christ.

But I hadn't surrendered everything. I just thought I had.

The Fiasco

This is the event that began to bring my mother's true colors to light for the rest of the family. This is the time when my sister and I solidified the relationship that had begun to come together in December. This is the moment that I realized when I remembered, what I remembered wasn't skewed. It just wasn't right or normal.

January was a difficult month for me migraine-wise. I thought I'd lose my mind. I had 16 days of full-fledged migraines. In the middle of this my mom called. We had just gotten back from a trip to see Joe and Blythe and she wanted to know if they'd talked about her.

"No," I said.

"I'm not surprised."

"Why?"

"They've defaulted on a loan that I made them."

It seems that they needed some money to sit in the bank for their loan approval. $4000, and they asked Mother. She agreed. The loan was for two months. Mother said they were two months late and she called Joe about it before we went to see them and Joe yelled at her. He told her he had no intention of paying the loan. That she'd made it as a gift to them.

Well, this was all a surprise to me. I sputtered a few things. I wasn't sure what I said. I tried to stay as neutral as possible. Ron was out of town. Mother said that she had an appointment with a lawyer and that at the very least she intended to ruin Joe's credit. She intended to ruin his credit? This is her grandchild she's talking about isn't it? I mumble a few things trying still to remain neutral, yet supportive. I wanted to hang up.

I couldn't call Ron because I know he's at a dinner, so I sent him an email. He needed to know in case something happened. Turned out that Ron had talked with Joe over the weekend. Joe had agreed to pay Mother back by the end of January.

After Joe talked with both of us, he called Mother. Mother was very short with him, but we have the phone records that he's called. Good thing.

In the meantime Mother mailed us a copy of the check. The check was dated November 8. This is very interesting. How can it be two months overdue if is was dated November 8 and now is just mid-January? Joe said that they had a verbal agreement for payment at the end of January. He's upset over her behavior. Blythe is upset. Ron and I are caught dead center.

The next Sunday we went out to eat. At this point Mother said she needed to talk with us.

"OK."

"I know I was a foolish old woman for loaning Joe the money, but you weren't completely honest with me."

"What?" we ask.

"I'm not going to say anything else," she says.

"You can't drop that bombshell in our laps and quit talking."

"I'm finished with this discussion," she replies.

Now this is common for her. She makes a jab and retreats. But I'm not a kid anymore. I've come to grips with lots of things in my adult life and I don't let up. And Ron's sitting there too. It's not just me anymore.

"The night I called Bitsy, she said, 'You'd think he'd outgrow that kind of thing by now.' You should have told me he had a history of not repaying his debts."

Well! I don't even remember saying that! I was just forming sentences. I was just stringing words. I was trying for noncommittal. So much for that effort. I tried to explain that wasn't what I meant. Ron and I had already shared with her before lunch about how bad a month January had been. We'd already told her about all the migraines, about the different meds, about the crying fits, about the night we got in the car to go to a Wake game with customers and he had to bring me home because I couldn't stop crying and she latched on to one phrase I said.

"You're right. I'm just a stupid old woman." She actually said that.

At this lunch, we told her that we'd talked to Joe and that he told us he'd called her. She called him a liar. We had his cell phone records though. He wasn't the one lying. We also had the copy of the check she said she never got.

We tried to placate her, but this was the beginning of the end. She wrote her grandchild off. If we were Jewish, he'd be dead.

New Traditions

Thanksgiving Day a new way.

We spent it at Joe and Blythe's and had a lovely time and a lovely meal. Brandon stayed there. Ron and I stayed in a hotel.

The day started EARLY - we picked Brandon up at the crack of dawn. Well way before the crack of dawn at the airport and then drove to Greenville.

New traditions for changing family.

Harsh Realities

When Daddy had his first heart attack. I was in the 11th grade.

I didn't know how much we needed him as a family. I didn't know how much he protected us from Mother.

Mother said that she prayed him back to life. That she prayed to God for him to live because she could not raise these girls alone.

I knew that God had spared him. I later knew that God had spared him because he protected Ann and I from the severities of living with Mother.

What I didn't realize until this year was that I would have been OK. Please don't get me wrong! I benefited! My life was far easier because Daddy lived! But God kept Daddy alive for Ann. I had just turned 17. Ann was 10! Can you imagine what the next 7 or 8 years would have been like for her? I left as soon as I could escape. She would have been left. Alone.

This is a harsh reality.

Authority Figures and Abuse

The following comes from a website called nothing more than Emotional Abuse. Charming title don't you think? It aptly describes my mother. My sister and I cried through it. Well, we've cried through a lot lately, why not this?

Authority figures (AF) can be parents, partners, teachers, principals, supervisors, religious figureheads, cult leaders, etc. Dependents can be children, partners, students, employees, religious followers, etc. What matters is that there is a power imbalance and a dependence of some sort, whether physical, financial, "spiritual," psychological or emotional.

1. AF's are the masters of dependents.
   
2. AF's alone decide what is right and wrong.
3. They alone make up the definitions, the rules, and the "consequences" (i.e. punishment)
4. Dependents are held responsible for the AF's feelings (anger, disappointment, embarrassment, humiliation, happiness and unhappiness)
5. The AF is only responsible and accountable for good things that happen, never the bad ones. Thus the AF' appears to always be in the right and when things go wrong, the dependent is always blamed and feels responsible and guilty.
6. The AF tries to exercise total control of the dependent by controlling his thoughts, feelings and behavior. Whenever this control is not absolute, the AF feels threatened.
7. The dependent's individuality is minimized as much as possible by the AF.
8. The AF creates an intricate system of punishments and rewards which rob the dependent of any sense of inner direction and esteem.
9. The following freedoms listed by Virginia Satire are denied to the dependent as much as possible:
10. The freedom to perceive
    

    • To think and interpret

    • To feel

    • To want, need, and chose

11. The AF never (or rarely) admits mistakes or apologizes.
12. All of the above take place in a way which does not expose the AF's true motives and none of this is openly talked about. No "back talk" is allowed

Some of the Consequences

· Mistakes are concealed

· People are under constant stress

· Needs are frustrated, denied

· Fear dominates

· Power is based on fear, not respect

· Information is withheld and distorted

· Information flow is primarily from top down

· Behavior is forced; does not come naturally

· Behavior is not consistent with true feelings, which adds to the stress

· Conflicts and problems are blamed on the dependent's "poor attitudes" and "character flaws."

All of this tears the dependent person apart, causing self-alienation and even self-loathing. The dependent person loses faith in his/her own mind and feelings with devastating self-esteem consequences. Depression, rage, mood swings, co-dependency, self-injury and self-destruction are typical outcomes. If the authority figure is a parent the person will likely develop symptoms of various "disorders" such as the so-called Borderline Personality disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder, Anoexia, Bulemia etc.

The Move and After

My mom had been talking about moving to Winston Salem almost since the day my dad died. She talked about moving to Little Rock first. That's where my sister was. She offered to buy a townhouse for my sister. My sister wisely said no knowing that one day mother would call that favor and move in.

About five or six years ago, when mother came out, she asked to start looking at condos. She actually put a hold on some new units over by Wake Forest but let that lapse. I figured it was just talk and wasn't worried about it. I was in no hurry for this to happen.

Then she got sick. One winter she got pneumonia or something as serious, and in her version of events, no one would take her to the doctor. She was so sick she crawled around the house, so she decided to move here so that Ron and I could take care of her if she ever got that sick again.

She wanted to move into the boy's rooms with the bathroom in between. We told her that wouldn't work. The boy's weren't finished coming home. They'd not graduated from college/grad school yet. Even when they did we'd like for them to have a place to stay. There was a unit right across the street from us. That would be nice -- a little close but nice. She could walk over for dinner occasionally, go to the grocery store or shopping with us. She wasn't interested in that though, so we looked for something else and she eventually found something by the church.

Now the adventure began.

Ron offered to fly out and drive back out here with her, but Mother would never give us a firm date. She got Ann to do it instead and she'd been fussing that we weren't there helping. When she got to Winston Salem, she had no idea when the moving van would get here. It was almost a week later.

She wanted to help in the Media Center so I got Kathleen to train her, but she never would start working. She went to Sunday School with Ruth Ann once and talked about how terrible the teacher was, so she never went again. She signed up to work in Children's Bible Fellowship, but she complained about Sherri and the people in her class all year. She went to one of the Senior Adult Luncheons, but no one called her, so she didn't go back. She wanted to work in Children's Choir, so I introduced her to Gale Foster. I guess they didn't know they were supposed to call her either. This past year, she has gone to a class of very old women and felt at home, but she's made no friends.

She has made very good friends with two women in her complex, Barbara and Mary Ellen.

The week school started, Ron gets a phone call from Mother while he is on the golf course. She's upset, but too upset to talk. He calls me, I call her. I go over. I call Ann before I go. I don't know what I'll meet. We pray.

She's miserable. She's got no friends. She's lonely. Her driver's license has expired. She can't pass the test. She wants to go home. She's never been in such debt.

She's been telling Ann all this with a whispered "Don't tell Ron and Bitsy," so I know, but I don't know.

I walk her through. "Where's home?"

"Arkansas."

"If we could get you there, would that make you happy?"

"I don't know. I don't have anywhere to stay now."

"What if we could find somewhere for you to stay?"

I asked enough questions to circle it back down to the fact that her drivers license has expired. Now she let this happen, but I don't bring that up. She's known since she moved here it would happen. She took it twice in the first week she was here and failed it. She said she went again but can't pinpoint for us when that other time was. She waited until the week school starts to make an issue over it when it expired on her birthday in July. The timing is suspicious . . .

I took her out to eat lunch when all was said and done. I asked her if she'd like to try a different Sunday school class with one of my friends. Ruth Ann's class has a new teacher and they have raved about her. That teacher is a friend of mine too. Maxine's teacher is excellent. How would that be? Oh, that would be wonderful! Both ladies have taken mother's number. I brought Mother in so they could work out the details. Told them both she'd not made friends where she was. Told them that she'd like to go with either of them. Where is she? Why isn't she here this week? I don't know. I can't make her come. I appreciate your efforts.

Mother said that she thought about going to a driving school. I told her that was an excellent idea. I would find one for her to go to. She wanted my help preparing for the test. I told her I'd make flash cards if I could take her book. This was Friday afternoon. Sunday morning she asked for her book back. I hadn't gotten flash cards made yet because it was the first week of school. She asked Ron to make sure she got to the grocery store each week. He said he'd do that. I gave her the school's name and number I found that was conveniently located so that Ron and I could get her there.

The students returned on Wednesday. Ron called the next Saturday and took Mother to the grocery store on that day. Sunday he picked her up for church after he dropped me off as is our custom and we went out for lunch. Monday she called and asked about school. This caught me off guard. For a few minutes she acted like she cared. Then she said, "I'm going to put some pressure on you. I need some help with this test. Will you help me?" Ann had been here over the weekend. She'd drilled Mother all weekend, but I hadn't done enough. We picked her up for dinner, and Ron casually asked her when her drivers license expired and she actually said it had a few more days on it. She lied. He said, why don't you see if you can get your Arkansas license renewed online. I suggested he try to do that for her while she was over our house. When he looked it up, the instructions said that it expired on the birth date and he read that to her. She had to admit then that it was expired.

He drilled her while I fixed dinner. She hasn't called the driving school. She has no intention of calling them. She got someone else to take her to the grocery store the next weekend.

Ron called twice the morning of the letter. He most likely won't call again.