When Adult Children Aren't

          I have thought that hell on earth for me began on December 15, 2008 when the truth hit me that not only was my daughter not engaged to prince charming, he was in fact,  the spawn of Satan.   This man had such evil intentions behind everything he did.  He lied about everything, and he manipulated my daughter to hate her own family, leave ALL her old friends behind, and become the one who worshiped the ground he walked on.   We lost her for SEVEN horrendous years, but, that was Humpty Dumpty's great fall, as far as I could see.  I needed to be pushed off my pious sanctimonious wall and broken in a million pieces so that all the king's men and all the king's horses couldn't put me together again.  To this day, the King  of Kings is still picking up some of the broken pieces and super-gluing them back on me.  Yes, we lost countless memories we could have made, but we are making better ones now, because I am a different person, and so is she.  It’s that verse, again, the one I can’t stand, Romans 8:28, which everyone uses with a bad thing has happened.  You won’t find too many people using it for anything other than comfort for the bottom falling out on us in one way or another.   

      Ever since my children were able to talk, I would tell them the evils of family estrangement.  Our family has been irreparably damaged by it, and I mean irreparably, because some of the perpetrators of such an evil thing are dead, and some of the victims of such and evil thing are dead, and those years can never be made up for, or recaptured.  I have been on every side of that miserable fence. My hell on earth began all the way back in 1978, not 2008.   I’ve been the daughter, the sister, the grand-daughter, the mother, grandmother, and according to some manipulative adult children that are not, I’m the cause of it for a family “across the pond” 9,000 miles away of whom I’ve never even met, let alone sat in their presence.  Of course, I refuse to take responsibility for adult (and I use that term loosely)  children who truly are not being adults, but rather spoiled, manipulative, demanding, controlling, dishonoring, disrespectful, and downright evil to get what they want, and that is total control over their incapacitated suffering mother.  They  treat their beloved mother as if she was their child, and they were going to brainwash her to think, feel and do just as they say.  I’ve never met these “adult” CHILDREN actually, but I know their mother and she has my sympathy. We were goods friends to her childen's dismay.  I use the word WERE, because they got exactly what they wanted.  They've done it to her with all her friends.  They do not want her to have friends, they want to keep her emotionally imprisoned, dependent only on them for any kind of relationship.  If I could get on a plane and bear 9 hours over an ocean, I surely would and I’d bring my rod of correction and help their father make up for LOST time.  

     

   I know what it’s like to be brainwashed by a family member, and in my case it was my mother.  Out of the six of us, I was the first one to break free, and I re-established bonds with my beloved brother, father and the dearest person in my life, my rock, (Because Allen means stone) my Nana.   My mother trained us to believe that our father was a snake in the grass that even Satan did not dare go near, thus if we did we’d be kicked out of the house and never let back in.  When you are 9 years old, or even 15 years old, you believe a mother who had threatened that for years.  

     She hated my father with a passion, and she was going to get back at him by taking his children away from him.  I’m not so sure that she wanted to hurt him by denying access to us for him, BUT, she wanted revenge by teaching and FORCING us to hate him, and lie to the courts and social  workers when he put up the measliest of fights to get visitation.  When he saw he couldn’t beat my mother at her evil twisted manipulations, he gave up and just assumed that when we were all adults, we would see what my mother did, the lies she told, and we would return to him.  BIG MISTAKE! 

      My mother wasn’t satisfied to do irreparable damage to my father and our relationship with him, but she went after his mother, my dearly beloved Nana.  She was going to find the measliest reason to hate the woman who was better to her than her own mother, and do serious collateral damage to her, also. (No pun intended, well, maybe intended a little)  The thing that sunk and ended that relationship permanently  was when my grandparent’s tried to recoup some of  the several THOUSANDS of dollars they loaned my father to get him out of bankruptcy, and keep us children from losing the house and ending up on the street.  My grandparents saved our home, but because they wanted some of the money back, in lieu of a lien on the house, or because Nana would not ban her own some from her own home, and take my mother’s side, swearing undue allegiance, that was all my mother needed to empty the half-filled glass of love, the only one we were getting at the time from the only source.  In my eyes and heart, she did  the most EVIL thing any “adult” CHILD can do, and that is to weaponize one's children for revenge, by stripping my grandparents from any contact with us.  

   

   

    The year was 1978, and not only did I lose my father and was not allowed to have any contact, but my mother took from me the only thing and place I ever felt happy, and that was at Nana’s house.  Back then, there were no cell-phones for children, it was AT & T, and long distance was just two towns away, and we were not allowed to call them, nor were they allowed to call us. That meant no birthdays, no holidays, no summers of pure bliss at Nana and Grampie’s, no visits to or from them.  It was FOUR years of hell with my mother, and no place to escape, and no loving Nana who always made us feel loved and secure.  I don’t know who it crushed more, us or our grandparents.  I’m going to have to lean on it crushing them, more, because when we were old enough, and our mother could not legally control us and with whom we spent our time, or at least I thought. The echoes of her hatred played like a broken record in the rest of my siblings hearts and minds permanetly. 

   

      The power of manipulative controlling brainwashing is so much stronger in compliant humans than it is in us rebel firecrackers.  So, as a writer of a wonderful fiction story GOD had given me seven years ago, about this very subject, broken hearts, I put my Nana in the pages of my favorite book, the book about redemption.  That way, when I am long gone, and when my siblings are gone, my Nana will be imortal down here, lving and loving and healing broken hearts in a place that has no end, and a story that does not end sad, if I have anything to say about it.   

        In 1980,  when my brother married a less than stellar young college co-ed, in my mother’s eyes only, she just pulled out her old bag of tricks and did the same thing to my eldest brother.  No one was allowed any contact, and he was banned from the family.    In 1981, when I finally hit 18 and I got my own vehicle, the very first place I went to was my Nana’s to bask in the love there.  When I went off to college, weekends home meant weekends at Nana’s sleeping on the couch or the 3-seasoned porch and lots of Johnny Carson with my beloved Grampie.  Nana was an early riser, and Gramps’ eyes never opened before the noon day meal, which was breakfast for him.  Those two were my most treasured family members, and those college years with them were the best.  I had a boyfriend who told me how sick he was to going to my Nana’s all the time, but I told him that I had to make up for lost time.  Turns out that darling young man turned to my Nana when I broke up with him, hoping she could talk me into going back with him, the basis for my favorite chapter in book 3.  He was good boy, and I was sick of being a good girl.  I was young and I wanted to party like my other college friends.  

   

    Sadly, the only two of the six that reconciled with my Nana and Gramps, was my eldest brother and me when my mother threw him out of the family.  The others remained disgustingly loyal to a lie and an evil manipulation.  They said that they wanted to go see Nana and Gramps, but they heard my mother’s voice in their heads, and they felt terribly guilty in their presence, as if they were stabbing our mother in the back.  She deserved it for what she did to us.  Eventually, when I married and became pregnant with my first child, the first grandchild on both sides, I decided that my child would have ALL its grandparents and great-grandparents, which meant reconciling with my dad. I will admit that was difficult, UNTIL I learned all the lies we were told  were my mother’s fictional tale, and not nearly the truth. You know in a divorce, there’s his side, her side, the kids’ side and then there’s the truth which no one really knows except GOD.  That’s why He hates divorce, not because He hates divorced people, but He hates the irreparable damage it does to people, the people and children He loves so dearly.  

         So, with all that family estrangement growing up, the damage it did, the manipulative lies that tarnished and devastated our family so badly, having become a mother, I vowed to never let my family fall into the most hated thing in my vocabulary, and that is estrangement.  Little did I know that the harder I fought to keep my family together, the harder the devil and his minions fought to shatter it to a dozen or more pieces.  This is why Humpty Dumpty hasn’t been put all back together again, because there are too many pieces that have shattered from that wall, and the devil’s minions have blown them away into the wind, sadly, maybe never to be found.  

     

   So, now, I’ve been a daughter taken away from a parent, a sister, taken away from a brother, a grand-daughter taken away from beloved grandparents, a mother taken away from her first born, a mother taken away from her 2nd born, a wife taken away from her husband, and worse even yet, a grandmother who hasn’t seen her only grandchild in over four years.  I can get angry and blame all these people for the damage done, however, we all know, like Paul said, it isn’t flesh and blood we fight, but it is powers, principalities, and authorities of this dark world, the cunning, destructive demonic spiritual entities hell-bent on destroying families, thus doing all they can to hurt the GOD who created them, because they chose to follow a proud angel turned more evil than our human minds can fathom.  

   

       It is my hope that someday, I will see my son again, and my grandson, but will it be in time?  Will one of us, me and/or his father be in heaven?  Will there be another generation of irreparable damaged hearts because of the term-limits GOD gives us on this planet.  Like Job 14:5 GOD has set limits, He has decreed the number of our months of which we cannot exceed. There is a song that I heard when I was in college, and I used to play it really loud and cried all the way through it, hoping beyond hope that it would not become our family’s theme song. 

    It "In the Living Years, we must make amends, because after our last breath, and no one knows when that will be, regret becomes the ghost that never leaves our home, lives, heart, or destiny.   My heart is sick, because my grandparents never saw my 4 siblings again, and I’m sad to say, I’m sure that my father will never see his remaining four children, again, after 40 years of manipulative control, even after the manipulator is long gone.  They wouldn’t be stabbing my mother in the back anymore, because you can’t stabbed ashes interred into a grave.  Now, it is the memory of her that they would dishonoring, they say as a reason to not reconcile with our father before it is too late.  It’s okay to hurt my father, but not my DEAD mother.   I'm quite sure that my mother is likely up in heaven, wishing she never tarnished our hearts like that, but it's too late to make up for it, or make things better.  

     So, to those manipulative, controlling, children across the pond threatening their mother with the most devastating thing that could ever happen to her, I say, STOP it.      Before it's too late...., listen, learn, love, and let go of your need to control who you have no business controlling.  She is GOD's child, not your.  In the Living Years

      Believe me, you  are making many mistakes with your own children, and let me tell you, what goes around comes around.  If you strip those beloved children the love of their grandmother, I promise you, it will come back to bite you in the butt, in way of a blog, a book, or worse, estrangement of your very own,  shattering your own damaged heart.  You've alreadyt stripped her of all her friends, because you don't want her to have any, thus keeping her unhealthily imprisoned under your control.   I'm sure that we won't be friends, again, but SHAME on you for taking away, or threatening to take away the only joy that woman has left in this mortal world, her beloved grand-babies.  SHAME on you for using your children and weaponizing them for such evil.  

STOP Trying to Be Just Like Jesus. 

Go for the Next Best Thing!

I know what you are going to say. There will be those who shoot for perfection who tell us that we are COMMANDED to be like Christ, (which we are not) Or some will say, "That's right, we should be like Paul."    Ehhhhh!  Both are wrong.      You have to know how I think to know who I'm going for here, and if anyone has read any of my blogs, they'll know I'm shooting for David! Let me explain.

Do you think that Jesus knows that we cannot be like him or think like him? (Isaiah 55:8-9) Jesus did NOT have a sinful nature. He was fully human but without a sinful nature. Well, maybe he had just a tiny bit inside just so that he knew the battle. Theologically speaking, many say that GOD put Jesus in Mary's womb because the sinful nature comes from the father. I tend to believe that. Who was called on the carpet first, and who took the first bite? When did Adam and Eve realize they were naked, after her bite or his? Case closed. Now Jesus had to be the seed of a woman, like Genesis 3 tells us, therefore he had to be from an egg in her ovaries. Now, Mary had an earthly father, thus, she had a sinful nature. So, if we are going to get technical here, like DNA and stuff, yes, Jesus could have inherited just a tiny bit of a sinful nature, yet he NEVER acted upon it. This is very controversial, because many say he was perfect and without sin because he was created pure, but Grampie Heli’'s seed was in that ovary, so, he was FULLY human. The point is that Jesus NEVER sinned. It wasn't because he couldn't, as in not physically able, it was because he couldn't in order to fulfill the purpose for which he was sent.

In my personal opinion, and I’m NOT quoting any Bible Scripture, this is just my opinion, although I love Paul as a brother in Christ, if I was going to church with him, we would NOT be friends. You can love your sibling in Christ and not be buddies that hang out.  I surely would NOT hang out with Paul.  I appreciate the fact that GOD chose him and trained him, and used him to write 1/3 of the New Testament, but I think we Christians have taken Paul way out of context and follow him as if he was as perfect as Christ.  Every word he says, we hang on to it as if it were LAW, to be strictly followed, NO exceptions, lest we become heretics.  If you want to be like that, feel free, but don’t expect us to be friends either.  People who attain to be like Jesus or Paul are looking for perfection in themselves and demanding it from themselves and others, thus when they “achieve” as much as Jesus or Paul in them to their own standards, that ugly little pride virus attacks their heart, and it’s damaged sometimes for good.

Paul’s words are for sure Divinely Inspired, but they are NOT Leviticus, and many if not most New Testament Christians treat his epistles as if it was the New Testament’s version of Leviticus. (The book of Mosaic Law in the Pentateuch)  Those people drive me nuts, and do you want to know why they drive me nuts?  I will tell you.  It’s because I am a freaking mess.  I am a total failure, a dweeb, a woman subject to my hormones, menopause, which is PMS on steroids.  I’m alone, a reject, been one all my life, therefore, I am subject to the devil screaming in my head that I’m a loser and always will be.  The devil screams but Jesus whispers using the Holy Spirit, that’s why it’s so hard to hear him sometimes.  You know we, like our children, have selective hearing as much as they do with our Heavenly Father as they do with us. We choose what to hear from Jesus, most of the time, it has to be to our liking, or we ad-lib a little and throw our opinion in there.  People have said they find comfort in Paul’s epistles.  Well I don’t, I never have.

People say that Paul suffered greatly, and he knows how weak we are, he knows the trials and temptations of a sinful nature.  (Does this sound like anything you’ve heard before only substitute the name JESUS instead)  Do you see what I mean?  Yeah, Paul suffered, he was brilliant, he had a sinful nature, he despaired at times, (although he barely mentions it), and he triumphed through GOD grace which was sufficient for his weaknesses.  But let me tell you what Paul did NOT have.  He did not  have a XX chromosome.  He has NO clue what it’s like to be a woman, a wife, or a mother.  Jesus does though, because he’s GOD.  I think enough has been said here about Paul, with respect, of course. 

So, who is the next best thing if it’s not Paul?  Duh, it’s David.  The Bible is full of screw-ups that GOD used to prove His grace and power to work through humans who were a freaking mess.  Jacob is my favorite mess, because it took 100 years for him to get it right.  If I was going to live that long, it would take me longer.  David, on the other hand was a bit more of a mess than Jacob.  Buckle your seat belt, because I’m going into the deep dive of David’s sewerage. 

David, besides being an adulterer, and a really bad commander-in-chief, setting up an honorable guy in the front lines in order to hide the fact that he was a man, and well,  I won't go there, but let your imagination picture what I'm thinking, was an adulterer and murderer LONG before Bathsheba, because before he got to Ziglag, on his prodigal road, he already had three wives. He collected more after taking the throne, and even had concubines.  Ask Absalom.  That makes him the adulterer.  Stealing another man’s wife, they makes him a creep. As far as fatherhood, well, shoot, you can’t get worse than David, ask Tamar and Absalom, again.  Well, maybe King Manasseh, but David was a horrendous father.  David fell into despair so many times, we can’t count them all, but the Book of Psalms exhibits quite a few of them.  Thank GOD he wrote those times down, or we’d never make it.  David had a prodigal road, yep, he left GOD.  I know, you don’t believe me. Well check out 1 Samuel 27, the very first verse and tell me what you see.  Go ahead, I’ll wait.

David was promised the throne by GOD and anointed by Samuel one of the great ones, and yet, he believed that Saul would kill him so he hid behind enemy lines.  He became a traitor. He was a traitor for 16 months.  He lived with the Philistines, he answered to a Philistine general and he conquered land and goods for the Philistine king.  In our constitution, that constitutes TREASON, and is punishable by death.  But, if you want to know the very very very WORST thing about David, read that entire chapter 27.  Read it very carefully.  Go ahead, I’ll wait.

What did David do that was despicable?  He murdered for profit and he made sure that NO ONE was alive who could fink on him to the Philistine general, who was his commander, thus he kept quite a bit of the take for himself.  So, to put it mildly, David was a MASS murderer, killing innocent babies, women, children, and men who were minding their own business, just trying to make a living and take care of their families.  Albeit they were pagans, however, and HERE is the clincher, GOD never instructed David to take over those villages, he was acting up on his own desire to whip up quite the fortune for himself, and to prove himself a great warrior for his PHILISTINE general, and he became quite prideful.  He was so prideful, that he was even to willing to go to war with the Philistines against his own people.  GOD’s people.  Think on that right now.  Considering what’s happening now, and who are the treasonous traitors running their shadow government, who have done their best to overthrow a duly elected and loved by tens of millions, President, the best one we've ever had, where does David measure up?  How do you like those people?  Say, like the Clinton's who are reputed as expert suicider’s.

  There is a LONG list of Clinton dead floating around, and thank GOD we don’t know the half of it.  SO, now what do you think of David?  Not the stellar guy, huh?  So, if he was like that, why should we attain to be like him?  That’s simple, what did GOD call him, “ a man after My own heart,” and in the book of Acts 7:46 it says that David enjoyed favor with GOD.  That’s the ticket for me. 

Every time I feel like crap about myself, and that is VERY often, I take a visit down David’s memory lane, and I shoot for being a woman after GOD’s own heart, knowing fully just how far down in the bottom of the barrel David had to climb back up.  GOD doesn’t treat us as our sins deserve, but he did give David a piece of his own medicine when He allowed Ziglag to be burned and ALL of the women and children to be taken hostage.  That’s in chapter 29 of 1^st Samuel.  Check it out.  That was when David “came to his sense,” like the prodigal son in Luke 15. 

So, now after this great revelation, I feel so much at peace, because I’ve stopped making Paul and Jesus my example of how I should perform, and I’ve made David my example of how I should seek after GOD’s heart with all my heart, all my soul, all my mind and all my strength, because I want to love Him that much. There was one other thing that David had that I have, crazy faith that believes that if I can hold out long enough, I can take down that 1,000 foot giant, because Allen means stone. I've lost a lot of friends over that crazy faith, and I've given up on it more times than I can count. Every once in a while GOD will do something that will fill my faith bank back up to full and over-flowing.