Thanks, Goldey. I really hope you're safe and secure now.
This might prove to be a new opportunity, but at the risk of sounding pessimistic, I have my doubts. I have already sacrificed much of my advancement prospects with this company by committing myself to father my two S's. As a result, I am now taking orders from a couple of people who would have been subordinates to me had I remained in management. Meanwhile I'm watching the painful cliche of people starting to crawl over each other to jockey for positions in the reshuffling new management structure. I am anticipating that one or more will use me and any other rank-and-file folks as cannon fodder in their efforts to wage their turf wars. I'm already seeing my boss start to pull advanced projects that I developed years ago as a manager away from me so she can have me focus on more mundane stuff. It feels like I am being sidelined so that my accomplishments and expertise don't overshadow less-seasoned management.
I hate office politics.
But I am confident that, come what may, God will make good use of whatever happens and prepare me for where he wants me to go.
...
I picked up S9 at their grandmother's last evening -- xW mother, the evil xMIL. I had brought S9's cub scout uniform for him to change into for tonight's meeting. While we waited for what seemed like forever as S9 changed his cloths in MIL's bathroom, we traded pleasantries. It seemed cordial enough, or so I thought. That is, until at one point xMIL showed me, with glee, S5's handwriting practice they had worked upon that afternoon. She had had him practice writing several names of people he thought important to his life. There were all the usual names writ large on the elementary ruled paper along with S5's attempts underneath to imitate the words and names initially modeled by xMIL's handiwork. The names included their mother's, S9's name, S5's name, their grandmother's (xMIL), ... but not my own -- no mention of "daddy" amidst all these names and family member titles.
That did not bother me -- what bothered me was that there in the very midst of all, standing out (to me at least) like John Hancock's overbearing signature in the signing section of the American Declaration of Independence, was the very name of the OM.
I said absolutely nothing and tried to be as nonchalant as I could muster. My heart must have skipped a beat however. I quickly put it behind me, but I was more than ready to get out of there at that point. I then spurred S9 to complete getting his uniform on and we got ourselves out and under way. And I got pretty busy from that point and put it all out of my mind.
But then I got up this morning and it struck me hard. I felt again the pain of betrayal and MIL's underhandedness in purposely working to wreck my M for her own selfish purposes. I recalled how she had coached xW to cheat on me and take up with OM, how sinister she was in trying to eject me from my family. And then here she was boasting on S5's handwriting, as if she were some normal, conscientious adult who had meaningful, qualified teaching skills (which she most certainly does not) -- and all the while rubbing in my face the fact she's subtly coaching my S's in to disregarding me as their parent and substituting me with her approved usurper.
My thoughts again are that I need to have MIL removed as a caregiver to my S's.
xW has tried to make me out to be insane and unreasonable in objecting to her imposing her mother on our S's. But this was clear evidence that they are both subtly and surely trying to alienate my children from me. Their war against me is still ongoing, and I must never drop my guard.
Why, I ask, do people seek to be so evil? Even to seemingly derive pleasure at their hurting of others? And to then try to instill that into the hearts and minds of innocent children?
I don't get it. It saddens me to think that such malice that they harbor will ultimately damn them to oblivion. I pray for these people, for what may be left of their souls, but it wearies me so much at times. I'm not strong enough for my own sake to be able to consider for long such blackened hearts. It's too much for me.
I'm just glad that God can and does bear to consider our sins.
