Karen, I take from what you've said the obvious fact that you are a great parent who is seeing the fruits of your efforts to teach your children the difference between Right and Wrong. You've got a great kid there.
My two are still quite a bit young and impressionable. S5 is easily swayed, certainly. And while historically S9 has shown a strict penchant for finding the truth, he has been coerced and propagandized by his mother, the evil MIL and her cadre -- to the point that he now accepts his mother's viewpoint on D, the OM and the reasons why his family is now sundered. She continues to buy our S's off with gifts and material objects -- an arms race to which I can no longer participate. And while I would hope my S's would be unswayed by such crass bribery, sadly it actually seems to be working to her advantage anyway. (It galls me further that I am subsidizing her materialistic ploy through the CS payments I give her.) S's tend to gravitate towards their mothers anyway in their sympathies, and mine are no different.
If I were to be forced to move away to find employment, I have no doubts that xW would use this to shut me out of my S's lives. She will immediately demand the 50-50 shared custody be abolished and that she be granted sole custody, both physical and legal. I also predict she would use this to further alienate my S's from me -- fully and completely. S9 especially would react badly to no longer having every other week with his father, and take it as my abandonment of him and his little brother. xW would use his distress to convince him that I no longer really care for my S's.
When she announced the end of our M to me, she had fully expected that I would abandon my children to her. She had counted on it. When she realized that she had misjudged me (in her A-induced fog) and that I was thus thwarting her goals as a result, she was quite angry with me for not following the path she expected me to follow.
I am certain that if I were to "flee" now. regardless of the real reasons and circumstances, she would capitalize on it, resuming the "script" she had planned for me over two years ago.
I have faith in God, I do. But sometimes its difficult to discern whether taking a particular fork in the road is something He has willed or if it is something willed by something else, like human folly and wishful thinking. Right now my gut tells me that abandoning my kids to try to "save" myself would be the weaker act of Faith. As such I tend to distrust any urge to "run away" from some thing, especially where my obligations and priorities lay.
