Tag Archives: childhood sexual abuse

The Red Carpet of My Mind

Posted on by Standard 48

It occurs to me that making friends on the internet is kind of an odd exercise when it comes to me. I spend a lot of time watching people…how they speak, what they say, body language, tone inflection, etc. Last night, I spent a good amount of time talking with Sara, and we talked for hours about subjects I’ve almost never discussed with anyone in my entire life, except maybe with Audra.

When I first set up my blog, it never occurred to me to not put my picture on my gravatar or in the About Me section…But some of my new friends on the internet chose to keep their physical appearance a secret. In fact, most of my Blogosphere friends who opted for anonymity have been assigned a “look” in my head based on some pretty goofy criteria.

For instance, Sara looks like Katherine Heigl to me in my head from 27 Dresses. I guess it is because of her alters, though I never really have analyzed why she looks like that specific character except that she gives not many hints about her physical attributes…

What Sara looks like to me in my head…

 

And then there is Terry, who has only ever told me that she is a tiny bit overweight, which is nothing much to go on because I know anorexic looking women who say the same thing. So, in my mind, Terry looks like one of my favorite actresses of all time — Kathy Bates, but specifically how she looked when she was playing Delores Claiborne..I loved that movie! And Kathy plays a wonderful, fierce caregiver in that movie for her friend Vera, who wasn’t always all that appreciative, and frankly I think she looks beautiful.

Terry looks like this in my mind…

 

The phenomenon works on anyone I tend to communicate with or about that causes any big emotion in me. For instance, any one who reads Sara’s site knows that her therapist recently violated her trust to a spectacular degree, is kind of arrogant and dismissive of her reactions to said violations of trust , has breached his code of ethics, if you ask me, and has been a general stumbling block to Sara’s fight to heal from her childhood sexual abuse. So, in my mind, this is what doctors who cause more damage than healing look like:

George Burns…or T..you decide..

Last night, I actually had a better monkey picture, but after I looked closely at it this morning, I decided I wasn’t as brave as I was last night..lol. Sara even dared me, but I can’t use it, so I lose this dare. But I think this picture pretty much says how I feel about people who misuse their power. :)

I wonder, does anyone else do this image assigning in their heads? Or is it just me that is so weird!!

– Bird

 

An Answer for Arkenaten

Posted on by Standard 140
Jesus

Jesus (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Update:

Be sure to read the comments for Arkenaten’s response. Thanks!

Anyone who has visited Anne’s site – My Life Uncut…Almost has probably met Arkenaten. As a tireless advocate against the existence of God, he tends to show up at her site, and occasionally mine, to toss out a few bits of his opinions and wisdom that usually make my head want to explode. I simply hate an illogical argument…

Today, I feel pretty peaceful and as such, I feel like I can address some of these arguments without letting my own human anger get the better of me, and to not tie up all of Anne’s WP memory, I’ll just see if I can’t lure him over here. I have a less than strict policy on language so he might feel a little more comfortable responding here.

So, let me say this first, Arkenaten. The anger you may hear in my “voice” isn’t directed at you, but is instead directed at the only real enemy I have, and that is satan. You may think I hate you, but you would be very wrong. I hope some day you are saved. I don’t wish for you go to hell, and I’m not interested in seeing God humiliate you. When you talk, I hear satan’s perfect voice luring doubts. I hear your voice puppeting the hatred satan has always harbored toward Jesus, knowing full well that Jesus would defeat him and take the throne he had so desired and envied for himself. So, please don’t think this is a personal attack.

Here’s how one Christian girl responds to long-winded diatribes laced with dusty old supposed logic and random references to little-known authors, philosophers, saints, etc, and all laced with an attitude of superiority and disdain.

I don’t have to prove God’s existence to anyone. Leaving out the “tired old book — the Bible“, God has actually proven Himself to me and an entire church full of people here, and a million times to me alone.

I don’t use intelligence as a measure of a person’s worth, as evidenced that I went to private school with people who ALL have achieved greater worldly successes than I have. I tend to feel more drawn and respectful for people who have had to overcome terrible, painful things in their lives. It is a point of reference for us that I consider a starting point for a real relationship.

So, let me explain why your careless words bother me. Anne has a real patience and love for a different kind of people, and I respect and admire that. But, I’m not going to insult you by pretending that I want to love you into the kingdom of God. I’m not dishonest, not even with the crappy parts of my nature. I have a feeling the more I read your writings and the more I interact with you that you are simply really, really angry. And believe it or not, that makes a point of reference for you and I to understand each other too. So, let me give you a glimpse of the world from my perspective.

I had an adult man molest me for years while I was a little girl. That person was a professed Christian. Tell me, how do you deal with how slow time is when you wait in the dark, afraid to go to sleep? Years ticked by slowly.

I went to authorities but they were uncomfortable with the subject matter back then and because they were unsure how to proceed, they just ignored the problem, leaving me, a little girl, to deal with a problem that they themselves had no clue how to fix. Tell me, are you lonely? I’ll bet I know loneliness better than you do.

How do you respond when your own mother refuses to acknowledge this horrible situation because she can’t afford to financially care for all the other children in your family? What did you think that felt like? What does “betrayed” mean to you, Ark?

Instead of having crushes and learning what it meant to first fall in love, I learned that touches were painful, and I still struggle with people touching me to this day. Is this a point of reference you and I share? When other girls were dreaming of white weddings and playing at being mothers, I was dreaming of murder and maiming a specific person. Am I evil, Ark? I know what hate feels like.

To hide his own behavior, he would tell anyone who would listen what a liar I was. I was accused unjustly, and labelled incorrectly. When I thought the nightmare was finally over, I found out that I’d been so scarred that the nightmare would continue to live on in me for decades, always haunting every interaction with mankind I’d ever have. Can you tell me what disappointment, hopelessness, grief mean for you?

I went to a church pastor who informed me that a demon that my own father had passed on to me had caused this person to stumble…in other words, it was my own fault. Can you say you’ve ever felt betrayed by God Himself?

I went to the world’s “intelligent” people, and they were full of big words, medicines, and science…but none of it made a difference. I know big words, too, Ark. I don’t use a lot of them out of rebellion against those same people. For people who were supposed to have a lock on the education game, they were powerless to fix what was broken in me too…My whole being right down to my sense of who I was was destroyed. Intelligence, education, science…they were powerless to give me my self-esteem and sense of worth back. They don’t make medicines for that.

I was angry at everyone in this world, and at myself as well, for not being able to pick up and move on. To not be able to just let the whole thing go. Drugs would help for a moment, but it took more and more, and it was never permanent.

I tried to be better for my kids and for my husband, but you can’t sell an image very long, and I was unable to keep up the pretense, no matter what my reasons were.

I studied Buddha, Taoism, and every manner of new age crap looking for something that would make my heart stop hemorrhaging, and that includes most forms of Christian variations. You aren’t talking to a person who grasped at the first lifeboat that I could locate and threw myself all in…I tested the God I serve now because I don’t like to be tricked. I don’t like anything or anyone having any power or control over me. And I don’t trust easily…So, if God couldn’t handle me questioning Him, then we had no basis for a relationship, because there could be no trust.

I eventually picked up that tired old book — the Bible, and I began to read, absorb, re-aquaint myself with the words in it, and they became alive. I had gone to a Christian school, Christian churches. I’ve always know God was there, but I had split when I felt He had not lived up to His end of the bargain. In the end, I didn’t find God in a church. He came straight to my room when I called out to Him.

Without drugs, professionals, churches, medications…nothing, Jesus began to lead me out of the darkness I lived in. There is simply no way someone who isn’t even looking for God is going to understand that. There are no words that will sway a hardened heart.

I write all of this to say this, Ark. When you carelessly run your mouth off, being ever so witty and clever, aren’t you as mean and evil as this God and religion you’ve declared war on? How are your intentions really different from Stalin or Hitler, or the many, many Christian Crusader’s wars you continually bring up? Hurting other people for the sheer joy of pursuing what you selfishly want to make your own existence more tolerable is simply the same thing. Self-love above what is good for someone else. Basic motivation that has varying, horrifying results. Isn’t that what the motivation was for the man who thought my life and well-being was secondary to his getting off??

Let’s say, just for the sake of argument that you are right, and I’m deluding myself. Is it more merciful of you to shake me out of a delusion and let me sink back into the hell that I lived in than to let me be healthier and happier now? Is the rush that you get by “proving” your theories and stirring people’s pots,  more important that the happiness people get from their religious beliefs?

People who are honest with themselves first always show that trait, no matter what they say or do, and it is a trait that I respect. We both know that your intentions aren’t to help your fellow man..I know this because I had a close friend who was a real atheist, and while her beliefs made me nuts, her motives were really rather good. You aren’t worried that we Christians will rise up and start the Crusades again, injuring innocent people everywhere. I imagine a lot of people can see through the words to your heart, even if you yourself aren’t being really honest with yourself.

I don’t have any clue where you are going when you die. I’m not stupid or simple enough to believe that God doesn’t have a better grasp on the “light that you walk in”, and people like Anne, who God put specifically on this earth for people like you, will probably always be a plague to you as long as you live and resist. Sorry. None of that is my business. What is my business, though, is that I’m positioned here for those who have experienced Hell already, and I won’t let you toss out nonsense logic without calling you on it. Not when those who are still weak can so easily be swayed by satan’s very excellent deceiving abilities.

– Bird

How Important Is Sin When You Love Someone?

Posted on by Standard 38

In order to clearly show my heart on the matter of homosexuality, I would like to write this post specifically to pinkagendist, Daniel Postlewaite, and John the Aussie. It is my hope that you will see that I don’t rank any sins that people grapple with above others…sin is sin, yet that isn’t what God is interested in. Yes, sin is evil. But He could have rid the world of all sin by just destroying all of it, and us with it. It is God’s love for us that is important, and was the reason He sent His son to die. To restore us back to our God, and to free us from the chains that sin places us in.

When my kids were in high school, my stepdaughter Brenda (not her real name) showed up in the middle of the

night with her high school aged brother and sister. We lived in Tulsa, and Brenda, Cole and Charity were all from central Texas. I hadn’t heard from Brenda in years, knowing that she had gotten pretty heavy into drugs and was learning some pretty hard lessons in life. It had been even longer since I’d seen Cole and Charity, who were the children of Brenda’s mother from a different father.

Brenda was beside herself, tumbling out this horrific story about the abuse and neglect that Cole and Charity had been suffering at numerous relatives hands. I explained to her that I couldn’t harbor run-aways but she was inconsolable, and I told her I would figure out what to do in the morning. Going to bed, I was freaked out. I couldn’t return them to being abused, but I didn’t know how much trouble I would be in for them being at my house. I prayed, hoping God would give me an answer by morning.

The next morning, Brenda was gone. Some time in the night she had split, leaving the two teenagers behind. After discussing options with the two teens, I finally called their father, who informed me that he didn’t want them back. “Just keep them,” were his careless words. What a winner.

Both of them had dropped out of school in the 7th grade, and it had been years since they had gone to school. And without the proper paperwork, I wasn’t going to be able to get them enrolled in school. Add to that fact was that they were both in terrible health. Their mom had abused drugs consistently when they were in vitro, and both had been born addicted to meth, cocaine, and other substances. Their immune systems were trashed. Cole’s bones were brittle, and a spill on a skateboard that should have been nothing left him with a broken arm. The whole experience made me furious at their parents.

But even worse than their physical health was the emotional scars that were devastatingly familiar to me. Ask any child who has been molested, and we will tell you..we recognize each other..Both of them had been severely molested, and I spent a lot of time listening to these children as they cried for their childhood that had been lost to them. Trust, stability, and security had been annihilated for them.  Especially Cole, who I could already tell, was so hurt and obviously leaning more toward the homosexuality that he’d been introduced to at such a young age. I spent more time listening and comforting, and less preaching…God wasn’t interested in me getting Cole to not be a homosexual. He was interested in me showing Cole that there was someone who cared about him, no matter what, and I never once addressed his sins with him. It wasn’t the time. God didn’t just want Cole to stop sinning..God wanted to love Cole, and the sins were secondary and could be addressed later in his life. What mattered was Cole, not what he was doing.

About three months later, the father decided he did want them back after all, and he drove to Tulsa to pick them up. They both cried, not wanting to leave, but the law was with their parents, and I had to reluctantly give them back. My whole family cried, including Chef, because they had come to belong with us.

Years later, while on a run with one of the most notoriously badass motorcycle clubs in the world, Chef and some of the other bikers he was travelling with stopped at a diner one night, and Cole was there working. Cole, obviously a homosexual that had come out, was so excited to see Chef, and Chef, equally excited to see him,  gave him a big hug and introduced him to all the grizzled bikers he was with,  as his and my son. And those bikers treated Cole respectfully and kindly, even though homosexuality is not embraced in the 1%er biker culture. There were no judgments, no sneering, no anything, but respect. He was part of our family, and no one had better have a thing to say about him…Because we love Cole as a whole person. He isn’t a poster boy for homosexuality…he’s a full, three dimensional hurting boy who needed us to love him no matter what. And we do just that.

If Cole were to suddenly show up on my doorstep wanting to know about God, my first words and actions would have absolutely nothing to do with his homosexuality. His sins aren’t what I, or God, would care about first. I would only show him every single verse in the bible that talks about how much God loves him. I would show him how God wants to heal the broken parts of his heart, and how we can trust God when there doesn’t seem to be another person in the world we can count on. There would be plenty for me, and for God, to show Cole before any of his sins would need to be addressed.

Christianity isn’t about a bunch of rules to me. It is about a relationship that heals and restores us to what we should have been before sin was introduced to the world. Yes, sins need to be addressed, but that really is between Jesus and his child.

Knowing what my past did to me, and what Cole and Charity’s pasts did to them, I’m loathe to rant and rail about how much someone else is struggling with. Instead, I tend to assume that there is a very real, painful reason that this sin is so hard for them, and I can pray about them getting the healing they need…

I hope this story shows that my heart isn’t against any one, no matter what they are struggling with. I judge NO ONE by what sins they struggle with…

– Bird

Bird Finally Actually Throws Down…

Posted on by Standard 105

I am having a bad day. Every thing that can go wrong is starting to do just that; my husband is in a full-blown battle with Father Time today, and I just keep trying to dodge the bullets. And even though I really tried not to, I snapped at him in a spectacularly dramatic moment that would have been beautifulif it had been in a movie, but

Sara

Sara (Photo credit: Wikipedia) This is how I imagine Sara in my head..

it only escalated the tension here at home. I usually know what I should do; I don’t always actually do it…I’m still in the middle of learning this lesson, and like chemistry, I get a little lost in all of it. My sleep medication hasn’t given me 4 complete hours of sleep in something like four days, and I’m physically, mentally, and spiritually worn out. My faith isn’t wavering…just my stamina and patience.

So, as he is inclined to do, these are the settings for the devil to lodge grenades at me in the form of snarky comments aimed at my friends Sara and Anne that were wildly inappropriate and hurtful. Now, in my tired and weakened state of mind, I didn’t notice that this is the Number One way satan tricks me into stumbling..by provoking me through someone else’s hurt or injustice. Anne’s comment that I flipped out on was a diatribe of why we Christians …blah, blah, blah by an proclaimed atheist, posted on a beautiful story about Anne’s dead mother. I lost my cookies…I could not believe the arrogance! Anne calmed me back down, and frankly, handled her own business with grace and dignity. But not before I threw down on the unsuspecting opinion-owner. I’m very impressed with your compassion and patience, Anne. I decided after that incident that I should take a break from writing/reading and cool down emotionally for a while.

And then stuff in my really-real world started spinning out of control this morning. I was just going to skip writing today, knowing I’m tired and grumpy. But, on a whim and in need of something to distract me from myself, I thought I’d read a couple of my favorite blogs, and maybe cheer up a bit. Enter, Sara’s commentators with their arrogant, and obviously ignorant, advice. Sara is a girl who is suffering from extreme effects of childhood abuse, and I can’t even make myself write the horrible opinions some people..who aren’t her followers, felt the need to slap on her. I seriously, seriously considered  going to their blogs and letting all hell break loose. I may not be able to kick a person’s butt physically, but I’m pretty good at a snark-war. I did warn you guys that I have to keep a strict hand on my temper, remember? Well, the best way to unleash the beast that is my temper is to pick on people I care about. It never really works when satan attacks me directly like that. And I get sucked in almost every time. This time, though, while I did respond, I was pretty tame considering what I wanted to say. It wasn’t a perfect victory, but it wasn’t a totally loss either. I’m putting this battle in the Tie column.

Finally, I open up my own blog, and I have this, I’m going to assume, well-intentioned comment under I Know Exactly Who My Enemy Really Is :

“I would be remiss if I didn’t comment to this. I wasn’t healed until I embraced Satan as one of God’s children and came to Love him as well. One of the Lord’s fallen angels – much like we are. He doesn’t bother us much any more (Satan, that is) because he has become one of ‘our brothers’. Took that to end the war in me.”

Now, does this remind anyone else out in Christian-ville of Jesus being offered a bribe in the desert? Because when I read it, I had to chuckle a little bit…my enemy had overplayed his hand, and the storms in my head and heart settled right down…Peace has ensued ever since. I think I can maybe feel God smiling..

I think this all happened by God’s own design today. No one ever gets snarky on our blogs, and yet there were attacks on blogs that I would specifically be offended on behalf of these particular writers..coincidence or divine intervention?…You tell me. And, in spending so much time in fury for the defense of another, I was able to focus on something that wasn’t going on around me. Tempers in my really-real life calmed down, and a peace treaty of sorts has been negotiated. We just ate dinner together, and the peace is holding.

I wasn’t going to write today, but Sara thought I should, and I think she is right. I feel better after having written it all out. You guys have a nice evening.

– Bird

For my Throw Down History, click here.

Heartbroken and Helpless

Posted on by Standard 30

If you’ve been following this blog for any amount of time, you’ll notice that when I sometimes get kind of heavy, like yesterday, I try to follow it up with something lighter the next day. And yesterday, I wrote about something horrific in my life. I was okay with it yesterday, and the out-pouring of support from readers was instrumental to

What an easy, crappy way out of fixing your real one...

my state of mind, but the day ended on such a hard note that I just don’t feel funny today. Instead, I have to write about how I feel about all this stuff, and hopefully, that’ll be enough to get over yet another bump in my road.

I talk about my Dad from time to time, and occasionally, my brother Michael, who turned 40 a few days ago. Both of these people break my heart sometimes, and I thought I’d share why.

To keep this post from becoming a tome, here are some articles you can read to get more of a back story on my history:

Breast Implants and the Sally Jesse Raphael Show - How I found my dad after my mom hid me and Mike from him our whole childhoods.

So, A Child Molester and a Little Kid are Walking in a Forest… - Humor and my dad, brother, and me.

Liar, Liar Pants On Fire - The custody battle.

Don’t Call Me Catherine - childhood sexual abuse

lol…It seems I won’t have much to say today that I haven’t already mentioned before!

In a nut shell, my dad and mom got divorced when I was about 6 – 7 – 8…the age thing is fuzzy for me and my Dad doesn’t remember either…no help there. What I do remember though, is that I was a Daddy’s girl one day, and the next day, he was gone, replaced with a broken man who seemed to not even care about his own kids much less his stepkids. My brother Mike was a toddler during all of this, and thus has no real memories of Dad before Mom left him.

Over the years growing up, my Mom basically hid us from my Dad. Unable to just accept the fact that she had two children from a different marriage, we were saddled with our stepfather, R’s, last name. This was no big thing for Mike, but for me, I had already gone to school with my real last name — Mallicoat, and suddenly I was having to use this other one. It was confusing, and for me, sad, because I was losing yet another link to a person that I had all but worshiped. Mom, during this time, would return to Dad, then leave again, a couple of times, thus keeping him on the hook. When she married R, Dad thought they were getting remarried again soon, and that she was collecting her stuff from the Valley. When she didn’t return, Nonie, my great-grandmother, is the one who told him that she had gotten married to someone else. I was there for the conversation…because that is how I found out she had remarried as well.

During a very long, drawn-out custody battle, my mother and the then-pastor of a now defunct church would tell me these horrible stories of physical abuse that my father had committed against my mother. Each time they would tell me a story, though, the details would be different..more exaggerated, and in the end, totally false. I don’t say any of this to cast aspersions on my mother…she had her issues, but overall, she had her own broken brain stemming from her own abuse, so it was easy for me to forgive her. But, as I told both her and the pastor one time, I remember living at home with my real dad and my mom, and none of this abuse ever happened. I remember us singing to old honky-tonk songs. I remember creating a whole train by baking cakes in coffee cans. I remember the pets, the family dinners, and watching Dennis the Menace every morning with my Dad. I remember mall trips, and my mom sitting in my dad’s lap watching television. In other words, I remember. I also pointed out that my great-grandmother and great-grandfather lived with us for a really long time, especially when Mike was born, and Nonie (that is what I called her) adored Dad. And this woman was a mean Italian woman who would cut your throat and tell God you died if anyone hurt her favorite grandchild — my mom, or great-grandchild — me. In other words, this supposed abuse just had never happened. Dad had loved Mom, me, and Michael. We were happy. Well, except for Mom, I guess.

Mom basically just told me back then that I had just forgotten, but I could even tell from her demeanor that she knew what she was doing was wrong. It wasn’t until about 10 years ago, though, that she finally just told me the truth — she was afraid of losing custody of me and the abuse charges were the only thing that she could think of that would be bad enough that the judge wouldn’t grant custody to my Dad. According to both of them, the judge was more inclined to give me to my Dad than my Mom, specifically because he kept catching her and the pastor in lies on the stand. And Mom and this pastor were how Dad was introduced to Christianity.

The whole time that I was growing up, and being molested, and being labelled a liar to protect the molester and my mom, in order to keep the adults in my life from having to face the responsibilities in this hell that they themselves were partly to blame for, the other children in my family were all witnessing what was being said and done. Mike was one of those people. Mike heard only Mom’s lies about Dad, and the couple of times he had to go on visitations, he was terrified of him. Dad was heartbroken. Yes, the best memories of my childhood were with my Dad, but Mike had none but the ones painted by people who had lied to him.

Eventually, Mom was able to break Dad, and when I was about 11, she succeeded in ridding my father out of my life, and out of Mike’s. Mike changed his last name to R’s last name, and I took my real name back. I left home, started my life, and Mike and I never really got a chance to discuss Dad…he just didn’t want to hear it. I found a letter one time that Mike had written to my Mom that said that we had never been close, so it was no big deal to him that we weren’t now. I remember crying over that letter because that was never how I had remembered it. I blamed my mom and R for tearing away from me not only my Dad, but my brother, and my other half-siblings as well…all in the name of maintaining an image. Even now, I can’t get Mike to talk to me. In the last decade, I’ve heard from him once. Satan has stolen my family from me, just as surely as he stole Job’s away from him.

Not one conversation I have with my Dad these days, this subject doesn’t come up. My Dad lost all of his auto part stores after Mom divorced him. Mom got everything…home, furnishings, money..She left him with nothing. He would never have any other children again because he never wanted me or Michael to feel like we were disposable to him. He eventually used drugs to numb the pain, got arrested, and lived a majority of his life bitter at God for taking his family away, bitter at Mom for making sure he never even got to see us, and bitter that his own son chose to believe other people’s stories instead of finding out the truth for himself. He blames Mom, that creepy pastor, and God. Never me or Michael…

Yesterday, I talked to my father, who is so afraid he will die of cancer before he gets one more chance to talk to his son, that he cried a little on the phone. My father does not cry. I can’t fix any of this, because I can’t get my own brother to even really talk to me, and he knows what happened to me. There doesn’t seem to be any room in his life anymore for us. So, helpless, I just had to listen to this heart-breaking diatribe from my Dad, try to swing him away from the bitterness against Mom, re-forgive her myself for this pain that, unfortunately, she caused. Again, Lord, what am I to do?? You are the God of Restoration…I’m begging you to Restore to me, and to my father, what Satan took away!!

I guess there is a part of me that hopes one day Mike will read this and understand that while yes, I understand to some degree what growing up in the family we grew up in did to all of us, I still hate that one of the innocent victims in all of this, Dad, is still being tortured by it. I want Mike to know that he did love us, the stories that were told to us were never true, and that while R never loved either of us like a real father should, we always had one waiting for us in the wings. The original one, that God deemed to actually give us. Dad thinks that Mike will think he’s mad at him because he got his name changed, but Dad doesn’t care about that at all. He understands, because he, too, was raised with step-fathers and he knows Mike never knew who he was. Dad is somewhat agoraphobic these days, but wants me to drive him to Colorado so he can go to Mike’s church just once. I don’t want to because I have no assurance that Mike would even speak to Dad, and I can’t watch Dad hurt all over again by all of this.  I suggested he write a letter, but his limited education makes him embarrassed that his grammar and spelling will only humiliate Mike. I suggested that I write it for him, with him, but he wants his own relationship with Mike.  All of this is just hurting my heart to no end. I can barely type from the crying…

The worst part of the conversation last night, though, was when Dad asked that if Mike was a pastor, how come he didn’t care about trying to help Dad make peace with God? I’m not laying that one on Mike. But as a man who life severely kicked in the teeth, I want to help introduce my Dad and the real Savior, and I can’t help but feel unable to do that without Mike, who, in Dad’s mind, is a representative of that same God. I have, however, informed my father that I need him to make peace with God because if he dies as a non-Christian, I don’t know that I will ever recover from that. :-(

I’m sorry this is such a sad post today, but that is how heavy my heart is. Broken for the family I once had so many years ago….Today, I really, really hate the devil.

– Bird