Well, I’ve been bleed­ing the past two nights. Not love, but the pain that comes from a bro­ken heart. 

My in-laws called my par­ents two nights ago and had a three-hour con­ver­sa­tion. BIL told them every­thing, and they all believe me. His par­ents are tak­ing the exact stance I thought they would, wash­ing their hands of any wrong­do­ing con­cern­ing his upbring­ing, and antic­i­pat­ing he will cut them out of his life when (if?) they con­front him about all this.

The biggest shock­er that night was when they told my par­ents my hus­band admit­ted to them he had molest­ed his sis­ter and grabbed her by the throat. They said they asked her once to tell her who all had hurt her, and after much coer­cion, she final­ly said he did. My dad asked them why they nev­er both­ered to tell me about that admis­sion, and they said my hus­band said he’d told me, so they fig­ured why did they need to do it as well? 

I know that’s a lie. They are all about the cov­er-up. They also said the mater­nal uncle admit­ted to them he had molest­ed every child in the fam­i­ly, INCLUDING HIS OWN, and they didn’t tell any­one about that admis­sion. MIL said think of all the fam­i­lies that would be affect­ed by the admis­sion, and all the scan­dal. And my dad told her, think of all the oth­er chil­dren he has now been able to hurt because you didn’t say anything.

After hear­ing all this, all I could do was sit before God, and ask Him to give me insight and direc­tion, obvi­ous­ly about my chil­dren most. What do I believe, and how do I pro­tect my chil­dren? My fam­i­ly has no doubts that my hus­band made such an admis­sion. There’s no ben­e­fit to my in-laws to say such a thing; it’s not like it makes them look good. It’s prob­a­bly like it was when my hus­band ini­tial­ly con­fessed to me on 10/6. Those first few con­ver­sa­tions were as truth­ful as it was going to get, and then when he real­ized there was a con­se­quence to the truth, he back­tracked. His fam­i­ly is prob­a­bly going to do the same.

But I also know SIL, and I want to know what exact­ly she accused him of, what exact­ly he did. I don’t know if I’ll ever have that answer. I just don’t under­stand how she utter­ly despis­es the mater­nal uncle and won’t be near him for what he did, and yet has always want­ed to stay around my hus­band and even now they are behav­ing as BFFs. It doesn’t make sense.

In any case, this is way out­side my con­trol. I need wise coun­sel, and I need God. And I cling to the promise He gave me the day I left – my integri­ty will pro­tect the chil­dren. And my soul is not churn­ing with wor­ry or fear. I still have the peace that sur­pass­es all understanding.

Despite that, the past few nights, I’ve been wak­ing up at mid­night and hav­ing fit­ful sleep til I give up at 5. The last two nights have been full of pain. Oh, such pain. 

Why do the emo­tions swing like a pen­du­lum, God? I went to bed so full of joy and hap­pi­ness. I’m with my won­der­ful kids. In my head, I could envi­sion us wor­ship­ping God togeth­er, and I did wor­ship as I lay there. Such peace and joy and hap­pi­ness, and the weight of the pres­ence of God. 

But then my last dream last night was of con­fronting my hus­band, say­ing her name, get­ting in a car to keep talk­ing to him, only to find her in the back­seat, and they both gave me smug grins. After the ini­tial shock, I turned to her and told her I’ve been pray­ing for her, and said I’m going to pray for y’all right now, too. And I lay hands on their heads, grab­bing fist­fuls of hair in the process, and start­ed pray­ing… and pulling! But as I prayed, the prayer took over the anger. My hands relaxed as the words poured out for their for­give­ness and heal­ing, and my hus­band start­ed cry­ing. And then I woke up.

The pain of the betray­al and the sub­se­quent fall­out is all there still. And each time I awake, just the right song is play­ing, about God’s love and heal­ing. But I toss and turn, just wait­ing for dawn to break, know­ing that the activ­i­ties of the day will push the pain from my mind. And every­thing seems bet­ter in the light any­way… even if it’s not. I know I can han­dle the brief kid exchanges, but an actu­al con­ver­sa­tion? Run­ning into him unex­pect­ed­ly? Oh, I couldn’t han­dle that kind of pain.

I real­ly should start call­ing him X instead of my hus­band. It’s not offi­cial­ly offi­cial yet, but in my heart, it is. The sliv­er has been gone since Fri­day. I want his heal­ing. But not him, or the fam­i­ly dra­ma that comes with him.