Communication, Children and Evil Ex-Spouses

Well, something came up with my husband’s x-wife and through it, the Lord has put it in my heart to write a new post!

The situation that came up is a repeat of something I still cannot understand fully.  My husband’s X-wife is one of those people who often do and say things that are just plain wrong, and many times downright evil.  In my humble opinion, I would classify most as ‘evil acts.’  That is the honest truth.  She does and says things that most people do not agree with.  BUT, no one –and I mean no one– in her life ever tells her that her actions are wrong.  People either go along with whatever evil plans she has, or just nod politely, listening to her but never saying anything.

The people in her life that don’t speak up and tell her she is acting in an evil manner are clearly those who fall in the category of poor and/or fearful communicators.  I’m sure that some are exactly like she is and do their own evil things, so of course they would agree with her.  But I know MANY really good people, some who claim to be Christian, that never speak out when she acts in an evil manner.  I realize I wrote about this Fear of Communication in my last post.  If you missed it, check it out here before reading any further.  The Fear of Communication is a big one these days, so I believe the Lord has put it on my heart, yet again, because it is really important!

So going back to my husband’s X…  The only explanation I have for how a person can get away for so long with not one single person telling them the TRUTH, must be that she, whether consciously or unconsciously, has surrounded herself with people that wouldn’t.  I am a truth-teller ALWAYS and it’s been my experience that the vast majority of people don’t want truth.  They might SAY they want truth, but only if it doesn’t hurt their feelings or go against what they really want or [insert many other ridiculous reasons here].  So in the end, regardless of their hyperbole, it ends up being that they really don’t want to hear truth.

It is only recently that my husband has even dared to start speaking truth with his X-wife.  After reading Andrew Wommack’s January 2012 newsletter where he firmly states that “You do not have the right to reject the Truth for another person”, and that if you do not speak up, you too are guilty of the sin (me paraphrasing), he has started to come around and understand that the Lord WANTS us to call people out when they are acting wrong.  My husband has always ‘feared’ his X-wife, even when they were married, because of what she ‘might’ do.  Her angry outbursts he has seen affect his children negatively, and he tried to avoid it at all cost.  Now long after the divorce, he is still afraid that she will take things out on the kids and fears saying anything to her.  I’ve been trying to teach him that if he communicates properly with her, he need NOT ‘fear’ what she will do.  If he presents her with the truth and she takes it out on the kids, then it’s time to get fully custody of ALL the children and she can answer to God for her evil actions.  He has spent a few years still ‘fearing’ this idea at all.  He wants to play ‘nice’ and ‘pretend’ to get along with her by just not speaking up.  But when she’s not feeding the children properly or caring for them, it’s time to speak up and/or take the children!  If you do not, then you are letting the demon of fear RULE YOU and I KNOW God would not agree with that!

About 4 months ago, we had to switch out the 14 year who lived with us for the 10 year old who lived with his mom.  He has been having trouble for awhile.  He’s been caught cursing, writing nasty things on the walls of his bedroom, getting into trouble at school, and the list goes on.  He wanted to support a friend of his being bullied at school and took a ‘shiv’ to school that he made.  Well, of course he was caught and the school was going to expel him.  We intervened and quickly had to switch out the boys.  This upset the 14 year who did NOT want to live with his mother, but with the 10 year old in trouble, we had no choice.  I mean, he had one foot in the door to Juvenile Detention, and next stop is jail!  The X-wife will not give us custody of both boys because she worries about having to pay child support to us.  She doesn’t want whats best for her children, she see only dollar signs.  Saying she is selfish and only self-serving is actually too nice a definition.  Seriously.  But since coming to live with us, the 10 year old has profoundly changed.  He is a different child completely.  He is happy, well-adjusted, hardly ever does anything wrong, and is a complete joy to be with.  It is CLEAR to us, the extended family and even the officials at this new school, that he NEEDED out of his mother’s home.  She and the step-dad have caused this boy damage that we are still working to reverse every day.  His emotional damage runs deep.  There is so much more I could go into to provide further evidence of the mother’s lack of caring for her children, but I will stop so as not to shock you with details, that will make you want to hurt her as much as I do sometimes.  (I try to be Christian always, but with some people it is so difficult…)

We took the 10 year old, who just turned 11, to the doctor for a check-up.  In the 4+ months since his last visit, he grew a full 1″ and gained 25 pounds.  This all happened while he’s been with us.  He is getting proper nutrition and we know that is the reason for the growth spurt.  The X-wife is all-consumed with the children being ‘fat’ (probably because she is fat herself) and we do not believe she was feeding him properly.  In the past 2 years, I cannot count the number of times the kids would come to our house, either STILL hungry after eating at her house or having not been fed at all by their mother!  Apparently, she’s been limiting their portions, not giving them enough or not bothering to feed them.  (I secretly believe that she’s too busy spending her money on herself and her needs to keep proper groceries in the house for the children.  Based on the behavior the 10 year showed when he came to live with us, this makes sense.  He would not want to eat cereal or drink milk so he could ‘save’ it for school days.  I had to tell him that if we run out, we WILL get more right away and he didn’t have so ‘save’ anything.  Some things like this he said really broke my heart!)

So my husband did something, on his own, that I never would think he could do.  He sent an email to his X telling her of how much the 10 year old has grown and that he didn’t think she was feeding him enough.  She sent back an email attacking him, as per her usual behavior, and kept calling the 10 year old ‘fat’ in the email.  My husband emailed back a very short and to the point email basically telling her that the boy is NOT fat, he is getting proper nutrition now which is what caused the growth spurt, and told her all she cares about is money, she doesn’t care how HER actions affect others, and that he will no longer keep silent when he sees something wrong!  WOW!   I was so PROUD of him I almost burst!  Finally, after 15+ years of knowing this woman, he was finally seeing her evil ways and speaking out against them.  I know that the Lord was proud of him too!

She sent a huge, long email to not only my husband but also to his mother.  All of us agreed, this email was her ‘pity party’.  Sentences upon sentences, over and over and over again, about she ‘tried’ to do this and ‘tried’ to do that but nothing is good enough for us.   The ACTUAL TRUTH is that if she has tried ANYTHING for more than one day, she would have had success.  We work with the boy every day, and even the simple act of praying with him before bedtime, means EVERYTHING in the world to him.  If she cared… if she ‘tried’… she would have had the wonderful boy that we have now.  A secondary email she sent after the big one was absent pity, since she saw that tactic wouldn’t work on my husband any longer, and was replaced with anger and pointing out how ‘wrong’ he was.  She even attacked me while speaking of herself and the step-dad glowingly.  She has let her demons completely rule her.  She REJECTED THE TRUTH my husband shared with her and refuses to accept any of it.

But there’s a big difference… My husband gave her the truth about how she has hurt the children, that she is all consumed with money, and her actions affect others.  She flat-out rejected this truth and will apparently be continuing on with her evil ways.  However, this time, my husband does not ‘share in her sin’ and that makes all the difference to the Lord.  I am so proud of him!