REPLACE IT!
An example of healing from the past
April 5, 2020
Note: I have abbreviated some names with initials in the event this is read by any of my ex-husband’s family. I insist that everything recorded here is true & not a word is exaggerated in any way.
I am going to attempt to pen a most extraordinary event that took place when my daughter Ashley’s third baby, Beckham was only 2 weeks old. This piece is entitled, “REPLACE IT!” But in order to effectively convey the full impact of what was being “replaced,” I must first recount the most horrible day of my life and the coldest, most heartless thing that has ever been done to me. Unfortunately, this direct hit came from my own husband when my third child Rachel was only one day old, April 6, 1993. Picture with me a young mother sitting on the edge of her bed at home, rocking a fussing, one-day-old baby daughter in her arms, her 5-year old son & 3-year old daughter running up and down the hall playing. It’s early in the morning, but the weary mother has already been up half the night nursing her baby every couple of hours. She is looking forward to an opportunity to grab a much-needed nap when a sister in law or her mother in law comes to help her with the new arrival….
As I sit on my bed, exhausted, but happily reflecting on the events surrounding the relatively short and easy home-birth of my second daughter Rachel the morning before, my husband C. walks in and announces that he is leaving for work. Stunned, all I could croak out was, “What??” He repeated, “I’m going to work.” To say I panicked would be an understatement. However I managed to remain calm. I knew after being married to this man for seven years that if you wanted to get through to him you had to spell things out slowly and calmly. I said, “C., please call one of your family members to come over and help me.” He responded, “Cindy you can’t talk to my family the obnoxious way you do and expect them to rally around you just because you had a baby.” I shut my eyes as I felt my face flush. If I had not just pushed a baby into the world a little over 24 hours ago, I honestly think I would have jumped up and tried to kill him. Our entire marriage had been characterized by little more than hours & hours of laborious therapy, never having enough money, no goals set (unless I set them), broken appliances, living in unsafe fixer-uppers, the list goes on & on. I always felt like I was married to a teenage boy who wanted to work as little as possible and then go hang out with his dad, brothers & sisters. When he was at home his time was spent watching football, writing music, and eating. Although the man was almost 40 years old, he absolutely loathed sitting down to discuss normal adult issues. I stayed off-balance, angry and embarrassed in front of my friends and family.
I was getting desperate but I forced myself to hold my tongue. I replied, “C, as tired as I am, I don’t think I will be giving your family members any grief today. I’m sure your mother is not doing anything. Please call her. Or your sisters. Or somebody. Please!” “They will come over if they want to,” he retorted. Then he turned and walked away. I felt myself begin to shake. A few seconds later he stuck his head back into the bedroom and tossed a bundle of papers onto the bed. “By the way, tell Jill this has some mistakes in it she needs to correct.” I heard his heavy footsteps make their way down the hall as he said goodbye to Eric & Ashley and slammed the garage door.
The house shook. It felt like the loudest door slam I had ever heard. I was used to being alone much of the time in the countryside of Nolensville Tennessee with my two children, but this morning I was facing a whole new level of responsibility. My mother in Atlanta Georgia had been battling multiple myeloma (bone cancer) for the past six years and was too weak to come up and help me. Dad was helping her as much as he could so he could not come up either. Side Note: Mom died just four weeks later. On the other hand, my husband’s parents lived nearby in Franklin, along with his two sisters & two brothers. All of them were married with families except one brother.
As the sound of the door echoed through my head I realized I was truly alone and needed to think fast. Surely one of my sisters in law or my mother in law would call me soon. But now I needed to get up and take care of the business at hand, namely feeding Eric & Ashley breakfast. But I was so exhausted, my head was spinning. The small bedroom was still littered with the remnants of a home-birth – a stack of baby blankets, full trash cans, plastic pans, my dresser covered with squirt bottles, bags of supplies & various medical implements.
Nevertheless I took a deep breath, asked God to help me, and I stood up. I set Rachel down on the bed, cleaned myself up as best as I could, put on some clothes, fixed breakfast for Eric & Ashley, and called Holly Tree Day Care in Brentwood to see if I could bring Eric & Ashley over for the day so I could get some sleep. I told them about my situation and they said of course I could bring the kids over. So I got them ready, packed lunches & snacks, bundled the baby into her car seat, and headed over to Holly Tree which was about 30 minutes away. I dropped them off, drove back home, nursed Rachel and fell immediately asleep. Still no phone call from any of my husband’s family.
Long story short, the next couple of days are a blur of calls from one angry Jill G. who was ready to hire a hit man to take out every H., my feelings of disappointment & anger, my poor mother on the other end of the phone crying & shouting, “That damned B.H.! Here I can’t do anything for you and she’s right around the corner and won’t lift a finger!” The midwife called that afternoon to follow up with me, to which I replied, “Well, I’m cleaning & vacuuming &…..” She asked where my husband’s family was, and I quietly said, “I don’t know.” To say she was furious is an understatement. “Those damned H’s!! What is wrong with them!” which unleashed yet another wave of sobs. She & her assistant both raced over and ordered me back to bed, which was a good thing because I had already begun cramping & passing rather large blood clots. They took turns holding Rachel and cleaned my entire house. Jill called Belmont Church, told them the H's were not planning anything and organized food service & hospitality for the next two weeks. Precious women I had never met before brought food & groceries for us.
I do remember one sister in law bringing over a pot of soup two days after Rachel was born and another one asking if I would like for her to take Eric & Ashley for a few hours one afternoon, but that was it. I didn’t see either of my husband’s parents until one week later. ONE WEEK!!! This entire event communicated loud & clear how this family felt about me. To say these people are experts in the area of “passive-aggressive punishment” is an understatement. My husband’s brother called one day following Rachel’s birth and asked to speak to C. He did not ask how I was doing, or how Rachel was doing; oh no, he asked how C was doing. I recall him saying, “C must be really tired!” I asked, “Why do you think C would be tired?” To my utter amazement he said, “After writing that Mass.” Sidenote: My husband had been working on setting the Catholic Mass to music all throughout my pregnancy & believe me, he received his fill of attention & adoration from his family. So when his brother said that, I rolled my eyes & thought, “Didn’t I just have a baby? Nah, I must have imagined it.”
These are the things that stand out in my mind in the days & weeks that followed Rachel’s birth. In my opinion, the unbelievably cold way my husband acted and the way his family neglected me & the children was 100% inexcusable and it is my prayer that when they stand before Almighty God, He will call them all into account for it. I wish I could say they have made up for any of that or redeemed their behavior in any way in the last 26 years, but sadly they have not. C has never been a loving, attentive father and after I left him in Dec of 1994 I never heard from any of the H’s again, except for a few calls from Uncle P to Eric in high school. Very strange family.
Friends of mine have suggested over the years that my ex-husband is “on the Spectrum” with Asperger’s Disease and that may be why he is so self-focused & cold. Ashley also suggested it recently so I decided to check out a list of the symptoms of Adult Asperger’s. I agree 100%. I always knew something was not right with him. Any husband & father who felt perfectly fine about leaving his wife alone with a 1-day old baby & two small children in the country, blatantly refusing to call anyone even when his wife begs him to, is a sick person. This conclusion also explains why his mind twists & distorts reality so far from what is true. Will he ever be confronted & diagnosed? I doubt it. Will his family make excuses for him forever? Probably.
Fast-Forward 26 years to February 2020, Cincinnati, Ohio. Ashley is now 29 years old, Rachel is 26. Ashley is married with three children, the last of which has just come home from two weeks in & out of hospitals. I have been in Cincinnati for two weeks helping her at the hospital, cleaning her house, folding & organizing clothes, doing dishes and all the other things a mother does when her daughter has a baby. Unfortunately neither Ashley nor Bradley had stayed overnight at their house much during the two weeks following Beckham’s birth. He had some problems that needed to be addressed, but now everyone is home.
So allow me to paint a picture of what’s going on and you will see why this hit me SO hard. It’s morning, I’m sitting on Ashley’s bed holding the baby and Ashley has just gotten out of the shower. I watch her from behind, so beautiful and muse how she has always been shaped just like I am. Primrose & Lincoln are running up and down the hall. All of a sudden it hits me like a ton of bricks: Oh no! Here I am again! I’m sitting on the bed holding the third baby and the other two are running up & down the hall! Oh no! Not again! But before I have even a half-second to fall headlong back into the grievous memory, a familiar voice in my heart intercepts my thought and urgently speaks: “Replace it! Replace it!” But what was the difference between that horrible scene in Nolensville 26 years prior, and this scene now? Ashley’s husband was chasing the two kids up & down the hall! Ashley’s husband STAYED! He did not abandon her, even though he would have been justified in going back to work because I was still there. He had already taken two weeks off, tirelessly helping with everything he could possibly help with, being a strength & comfort to Ashley, bringing her food, wine, flowers, chocolates, you name it. Complete opposite of the punishment I had endured.
I shut my eyes there on that bed rocking the baby and didn’t even have to imagine myself back there in Nolensville because the parallels were already perfectly in place. Right that minute, under the gentle instruction of the Holy Spirit, in my mind I picked up their bedroom & hall in Cincinnati and set it down over the top of my former bedroom & hall in Nolensville. I replaced the old with the new, and inserted a husband & father that STAYED. I was unable to hold back the deep sobs of a wife & mother that had been so wounded, so betrayed, but was now being healed. Holding that third baby close, I could almost literally feel cool, healing water flood that old bedroom, washing away the hurt & fear, replacing it with peace & joy. Ashley turned to ask me what was wrong and I struggled through tears & laughter to explain what was happening to me! It was indeed glorious.
Some events in life are so traumatic you never have a chance to redeem them; you must simply forgive the perpetrators and move on with your life. C. continued to make life miserable for our children & me after the divorce, rarely offering help in any way. He consistently put himself and what was convenient for him at the forefront of everything he did. We all suffered. He truly is the living definition of clueless & self-absorbed. I continued to forgive him over & over, teaching my children to do the same, until Rachel graduated from high school and we were finally free of the court-ordered parenting plan.
As for the heartbreak surrounding Rachel’s birth, over the years I have tried my best not to dwell on it. When Ashley & I concluded that C. was mentally ill, that conclusion offered us a legitimate, labeled category in which to file the years of bizarre behavior. I was then able to go down my mental list of things he had said, done (or not done), and “file” them in the Mentally Ill box. I also remember making a conscious decision to release him from all expectations except the mandated child support. The kids & I had discovered over the years that he could not be trusted, nor could he be relied upon to behave like a mature adult, let alone a father. But when Prim was born & then Lincoln a year later, the familiar sting crept back in as I observed how lovingly attentive Bradley was to his family in comparison to how blind C. was to us. I had to quickly picture that Mentally Ill/No Expectations file box. But in my heart, I knew I had been robbed by my husband of the joy & excitement I should have been able to experience with the birth of a child, and I would never, ever be able to get that time back. But now, because of the deep healing ministry the Lord orchestrated for me in those precious moments sitting on my daughter’s bed 26 years later, I never have to re-live the pain of that day again. I have REPLACEDIT!
