For those of you who are new, and those who probably don't remember, my MIL and I don't have that great of a relationship, and neither do she and her 3 sons. I talked to Sailorman this morning, and he said that he had received an email from his mother. We are currently working on orders to be transfered to our home state, but not our home city. The main reason, Sailorman doesn't really want to be that close to his mother. Now, this email stated that she couldn't wait till we get transfered back home so she can "be close to K & E again. Oh, and Abbi too." <p>Now, I had posted, almost a year ago, the problems we were having with Sailorman's mom having told his brothers, w/o our permission, the WHOLE story. This also upset his brothers, as they would have rather us told them. Well, MIL had called me to "explain" why she felt the need to tell her WHOLE family! Needless to say, I let her know how both of us felt about her doing something behind our backs, after being asked not to.<p>Sailorman has accepted Abbi as his D in every way. He loves her just as much as our other 2 children, and will always be her Daddy. When he read what his mother had written, he was so hurt that she didn't include all 3 in the same sentence. I tried to be understanding, but felt the same way he did. I hate to see the hurt continue, and would love to have Sailorman have a good relationship with his mother. The biggest problem with that is, she doesn't see that what she is doing is wrong. Never has apologized for telling the family, in fact, claims she did it to let everyone know that we needed prayer! She even told the oldest that she knew that we didn't want her to say anything! I just wish that she could see the pain that she is causing her children with her actions. <p>Of course, there is so much more to this story, as all her DIL's are treated about the same, and none of her son's really want to live near her. In fact, Sailorman made a statement of, we may just stay up here(near the middle brother) and never go "home" again. Of course, I stopped that in it's tracks, as my parents live about 5 miles away from his. <p>Anyway, sorry that I got long winded, I just would like to have prayer that somehow, the relationship between Sailorman and his mother can be healed, or started anew.<p>Thanks, <p>Tigger

I will be praying for you Tigger. I have a different problem of that sort in which my in-laws berated me for NOT being a part of OC's life and NOT "allowing her into our lives" (It was H's decision too, but they are nice to him).Needless to say, our relations are strained at the moment.<p>I pray that it will all work out for you and that you will be reunited soon with your hubby.<p>Hugs,
Twiisty

Tigger,<p>I was glad to see Sailorman check in on the thread for men in a situation similar to his. I am glad that he is safe. Any word on when he will be coming home? How are you doing through this deployment? How is he doing? I am sure it is hard on him having to be away from the four of you at home.<p>I am having similar problems with my in-laws. Mr. J told them of his A and OC before he told me. (OK, he never told me. I found photos on his computer of exOW and OC.) I don't know why he told his parents; he says he was hoping that they would have some magic words to make this all go away.<p>When he told them, he asked them to keep his confidence. They have expressed some interest in Precious. They ask how she is, Mr. J has sent them online photos we have from our visits; exOW has sent them photos of Precious and they send presents for her b-day and Christmas.<p>What they did do is tell all of Mr. J's brothers and sisters and send them computer photos of Precious. They have in turn told all of their children down to our 8-year-old nephew! To say that we are angry would be an understatement. <p>When Mr. J tried to confront them about this, he got so choked up he lost his words and broke down in tears (a very, very rare occurance for him).<p>We have no intentions of keeping this from our boys that we are about to adopt, but we want to be able to share this information with our children in our own way, in our own words. For Pete's sake they aren't even going to speak English when the arrive but I worry that an 8-year old child will spill the beans before we get the chance to. You know? When they have enough Enlish to understand "you daddy has a little girl with another lady, not your mom. They live in a different state" and before they have enough English for us to make an adequate explanation of this situation. <p>To make it worse, we kept the news of exOW, A and OC from our social worker. She didn't ask and we didn't tell. So, if our boys find out before the adoption is finished and they share that info with our social worker, we are toast. I don't want to involve children in "keeping secrets." Our plan was to not tell them about Precious until after the finalization of the adoption, six months after we bring them home.<p>So, that was a long-winded way of saying that of course you will be in my prayers. How did I forget to pray for oursleves and our in-laws? I guess I was too busy hanging onto my righteous anger at my in-laws to remember that we are commanded to pray "without ceasing." Besides, praying might have forced me to confront that forgiveness is also expected of me.<p>MJ

Thank you Twiisty and Mrs. J!<p>Twiisty,<p>I am sorry that your in-laws have done this to you. I am of the feeling that if you are not comfortable/willing to deal with the xOW's antics regarding visitation, and your H concurs, then that should be that.<p>Mrs. J,<p>Well, your H's parents took it one step further than Sailorman's. But I do wonder if the neice and nephews were older, would they have been told? The oldest will be 5 soon, and the youngest will be 3, so they wouldn't have had a clue what Grandma was saying a year ago. <p>For your other questions on his deployment, he will be home in 3 months from last Friday. The kids still think he will be home 3 months from this Friday, but we want to surprise them, and have a little alone time, if you know what I mean [img]images/icons/rolleyes.gif" border="0[/img] <p>I am doing quite well. Since Abbi keeps twice as busy as the older two, the days seem to just fly by! Our construction paper chain is now half the size it was when we started!<p>Luckily, I finally got our digital camera, and am able to send Sailorman pictures through email, so he doesn't have to wait for the unpredictable regular mail.<p>Again, thank you for your prayers.<p>Love,<p>Tigger

Glad to see your H will be home soon...sometimes the time flies and sometimes it crawls....(I used to be an ex-army wife!)<p>Praying for safety still...thanks for your kind reply...didn't mean to unload!<p>Hugs to you and your precious family,
Twiisty

Just got off the phone with Sailorman. He asked if I was surprised to see his post, and I truely was. Turns out that he went ashore while they were in port yesterday. He wanted me to let you all know that he will probably try to post one more time, next time they are in port, but that will be it till he gets home.<p>He still has yet to email back to his mother, but that is something he needs to do in his own time.<p>Twiisty,<p>Don't worry about "unloading". In-laws can be a very touchy spot for many people. Vent all you want about them here too [img]images/icons/grin.gif" border="0[/img] <p>Well, I gotta go try to get some more house cleaning done. <p>Love,<p>Tigger

Tigger, <p>I think, but am not sure, that I got your question. Right now, our nieces and nephews below the age of 8 have not been told by their respective parents about Precious (at least I think that they haven't).<p>We wanted to disseminate this information in our own time for a couple of reasons:<p>1. The ability to tell our children first
2. We still occassionally talk about not continuing visitation with Precious. We talk about it less now than before and I don't think that this is what we will decide. We know that since she is now 18 months old that the window for making such a decision is closing and it looks like we are going to stay on the visitation side of the window. However, I will tell you that even though the visits are quite enjoyable and the relationship with have with exOW is really settling down, these visits are brutally hard on our marriage. We are both pretty miserable for about two weeks before and after a visit and damamge our marriage with LBing. We also struggle about how we are going to involve the boys in these visits. I am unwilling for Mr. J to go near exOW w/o me and yet I doubt I am going to be willing to leave boys in the first year to make these visits.<p>So, that is the long answer to your short question. Eventually, yes, we would have told all nieces and nephews about Precious--after we had had time to tell our own children and after we were absolutely certain that we were going to continue visits with Precious.<p>Our current plan is that by the time Precious is age 6 or 7 that one of us will fly out there to get her and bring her back here for her visits with us and then one of us will bring her back home to her mother's. So, by that time we need to have figured out how we will incorporate her into not just our lives, but the lives of our relatives, our church and our neighborhood. One time, early on in the process, I asked Mr. J to figure out how we would introduce Precious to the people in our lives (not immediate family). Mr. J asked "Can't we just introduce her as our niece?" I said "not unless you want to be paying for her psychiatric care through age 34." Poor silly soul, I love him dearly.<p>My mother was visiting this weekend when exOW and Precious called us. Mom was surprised at how easy-going the phone call was. Precious had been chattering about me all morning and kept saying "MaryJanes phone." Funny how she used to call me Mrs. Job and now she has switched to calling me MaryJanes.<p>I had a bit of fun tweaking exOW with the phone call. Even though I am now welcome in on the phone convesations, exOW almost always calls Mr. J on his cell phone. It is a long habit from all the years of their affair and I am sure that there is something in her about not having to face me if she really doesn't have to. So, Mr. J was out playing tennis and his cell phone was ringing in his study. He forgot to take it with him. So for the first time ever, I answered his cell phone. I could see from caller ID who it was. She just sputtered to see that this private line of communication had been breeched by the enemy. [img]images/icons/smile.gif" border="0[/img] <p>While we were talking exOW told me that Precious can't stop talking about me since our visit in December. I said "We really, really hit it off this last visit." exOW said "I can see why. You are so kind and it's obvious how much you love kids." Chalk one up for the side of goodness and light. I think that if we want it to, this visitation stuff can work out and we will have a calm relationship with exOW, not friendship, but a pleasant working relationship. Each visit gets easier and exOW gets calmer.<p>MJ<p>[ January 22, 2002: Message edited by: MaryJanes ]</p>