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Thursday, February 21, 2013

Clean up, clean up, every teen and every tween!


Oh my goodness. I can't take it anymore. These girls' rooms are so gross, I can't believe there are people living and sleeping in there. 
I seriously went to wake them up once and because of the immense stuff in their bed, I thought they were in there but they weren't! They slept in another room. Probably because they couldn't get to their bed. I'm not saying my room doesn't have the occasional bad day. OK! FINE! Bad week....MONTH! However, my room has NEVER looked like that, even when I was a kid. It's quite scary. 

I do not know how to get them to keep it clean. I've tried allowances, yelling, punishing, stickers, rewards, applause, ignoring, laughing, helping and anything else you can think of. I even cleaned it once myself. Took me 10 hours!! No lie! 5 garbage bags later, their room was spotless. I don't know why they can't keep it clean. 
(Is this what it's like in heaven?)

*sigh*......Suggestions welcome. I'm on my last idea: only allowing a bed, dresser and one rubbermaid tote each. If it doesn't fit, you must toss it. Today, they are stuck cleaning until it is clutter and garbage free. I know it's so mean, but what other options do I have??? They have to learn to keep a clean room or they will end up on an episode of hoarders!

PS: These pictures are the closest thing I could find to what their ACTUAL room looks like. These are still cleaner LOL!

Saturday, February 2, 2013

This Is Me. Raw & Uncut.

Ok. I am freely going to admit some things here and I'm doing it simply because I'm human. I am simply flesh and I need help with this. I am sending out a caution now~there may be some harsh things said here and it may not be very christian. Though I will try to keep it as nice as I can stand. 

So, its no shock that my unwedded relationship with Mariyah's dad, didn't end like a fairy tale. I had a child with someone even though our relationship was not stable. I was stupid, I thought a baby would fix it...WRONG. Ladies, as sure as I am writing this, please trust me when I tell you, babies are not band-aids. *sigh* Moving on. My daughter is 11 years old and I have 7 years left before I can start phasing out her father. Not that I want her to grow anytime soon. I know that he will always be a part of my life but once she is 18, there will be no need for all the court drama and nasty text messages he sends. No need for the constant fighting between us because we have completely opposite parenting styles. I can't even begin to explain how opposite. There's a reason I have sole custody. I'll give you some examples of what I'm working with. Flash back to when Mariyah is just a few months old. She has a high fever and she is coughing. Her dad, we will call him DJC, feels the best way to care for her is to put her in a turtle neck. He is literally yelling at me because I will not tell him where to find one in her dresser. He claims that the turtle neck will warm up her throat and help to stop the coughing. Now, my opinion, um hello!! She has a high fever, I think she's pretty warm all over, I'm DEFINITELY not putting her in any clothes whatsoever. Granted, we were both very young, 19 & 20. But I'm no idiot! Flash forward to last month. DJC takes Mariyah sledding....in the dark... at a park that although it has awesome sledding hills, also has lots of trees. She hits one of the trees, fracturing her elbow and hitting her back really hard. My first reaction is the hospital, I don't care if she's in pain or not, she hit a tree! His reaction is "Let's go to Tops and get a hot pack for her." Are you kidding??? So you can see his logic is a bit off. I'll blame it on his upbringing and leave it at that. Currently, I filed court papers to ask him to agree to change a visitation day so that Mariyah can attend church with us. He filed a cross petition asking the court to force me to allow Mariyah to have an iPhone (that he already bought her) with her at all times so he can contact her whenever he wants. He can easily call my phone and talk to her whenever unless we are eating, doing schoolwork or something else along those lines. I do not want my kids hooked to technology 24/7 and thinking its ok to communicate that way. There certainly is no reason for an 11 yr old to have a cell phone contract. There have been several issues in the past where technological devices that he has purchased for her have become problems. Once the police were even called on me because I punished her from it. Yes, the police came to my house demanding I give back the iPod. I angrily handed it to the officer and said "You can tell him I do not want it sent back to my house ever again!! And I'm sorry he wasted your time." I feel like I'm dealing with a child all the time. I can't take it. Even today, I allowed Mariyah to go over his house early and stay late because I had to work. He has her text me to see if she can stay another 3 hours. I say no and instead offer to let her stay another half hour. He hadn't fed her dinner yet so that's why he wanted her to stay longer. You had her ALL day and you can't feed her dinner?! Ugh!! So I stand firm on only allowing another half hour. He sends me a text which is too explicit to repeat. The gist of it is him calling me the "B" word, telling me to shut up and saying "FU". Normally he also calls me selfish among a host of other insults. Now, in trying to be christian, my husband has tried his VERY BEST not to murder him. Although, when a man (or someone who is supposed to be one) is constantly verbally abusing your wife and insulting/disrespecting her, it's hard to stay out of it. Somedays, I wish he would just punch him in his face so hard. But I know DJC, he will call the police and my husband will go to jail, which will be very embarrassing to explain to my pastor. However, it would ensure that my husband would get full body massages everyday for the rest of his life. Such a toss up... I know we are taught to love everyone especially our enemies. I feel like every conversation with him is a test and I fail every. single. time. I can't help but defend myself and fight back and say mean nasty things to him to make him feel bad because he angers me so much. I can't help it! I'm weak. And I'm in no way proud of how I make him feel. He's 32, homeless and living between his mom and sister's house. Never been able to make it on his own. No job. Collecting unemployment for the past 2 years while working under the table DJ'ing. He has two kids he barely supports. No future plan for life. 8th grade education. He's not very bright. He makes it so easy to hit him where it hurts. And I know it's wrong, because I'm sure that he tries to make me mad simply because I have a better life than he does. (I don't mean that as horribly stuck up as it sounds.) We split up and he thought I couldn't stand on my own two feet without him. I own a house, I get to stay home with my kids, I have an amazing church, an amazing husband, a family. I am blessed. He doesn't have any of those things and I'm sure he knows that he should have more to show for himself by now. He hurt me a lot when we were together. He belittled me, he abused me mentally,verbally and physically. He cheated numerous times and made me believe it was my fault. He ruined my heart and any chance to trust a man ever again. I had less than zero self esteem when we broke up. I lost my best friend and my family because of him. More importantly, I lost who I was because of him. I say that I forgive him for all of that and I want to believe it. I've told him that I forgive him. I WANT to forgive him but, I can't help but relive every moment of pain when he talks to me the same way he talked to me when we were together. I want to fight with him and say things to him that I should've said a long time ago. I want to talk to him the way he talked to me. I want to make him feel as small and unimportant and stupid as he made me feel. I want him to cry his eyes out for hours like I did. I want his heart to be so broken by the words I say to him that, he can't even feel pain anymore. That being said, I am trying so hard to grow spiritually and I am held back because of the anger I have towards him. I can push people away who hurt me and I can stop talking to family members who are hindering my growth. But I have no choice in dealing with DJC. I have to. I've come a VERY long way. I asked for prayer at church and I was doing so good for a really long time. I wouldn't respond to any text messages that included insults or curse words, that was pretty much every text he sent me. Our communication, was on an as needed basis only. We were doing well compromising when it came to Mariyah. I don't know what happened, he just flipped a switch and today started all the drama again. I realize now that it's hopeless. We will never get along. We can't work together. I am so thankful that God helped me to leave that situation and never look back. I will never forget the day I left him for good. We were in another argument and he was talking to me like I was nothing to him. I simply asked him if he ever planned to treat me right. He said, "No. Why should I? You don't deserve it." So I responded with, "Then you don't deserve me." With that, I walked away from him. It was the most ballsy thing I ever said to him. I was so proud of myself. After that, I went crazy. By crazy, I mean I did EVERYTHING that he hated. I cut my hair, I got a tattoo (a stupid one) and I went out to the club with my bff and got drunk~a lot. I'm not proud of the drinking or being drunk. Did we have fun, yes. Did we make some great memories/stories, yes. Do I regret it, no. I can't regret any decision I have ever made because it made me who I am now. Stronger, smarter and more me. It's also how I met my husband. Yes folks, we didn't meet at church or at a youth rally. I wish our story was that PG. We met at a bar, both drunk, both dancing a little too sinfully, both fresh out of a bad long term relationship, both with kids sleeping at gramma's, both with a broken heart and no ability to trust. And ya know what? God made something beautiful out of it. We are married, and we have a strong trusting marriage that involves God and a lot of praying from church family members. I couldn't ask for a better husband. He really is my best friend and I really trust him. More than I have ever trusted anyone including myself. He knows me and all my faults. He has seen me down right certifiably crazy and he still loves me. He has seen me scream I hate you and still loves me. He has seen me skinny, fat, a mess, beautiful, sloppy, neat, crying, laughing, sweating, and first thing in the morning and he still loves me. He held my hand and had my back through the long, difficult delivery of our son. He never left my side and advocated for me when I was unable to. He took my daughter in as his own and loved her despite the problems her dad causes. My family loves him simply because he loves me and he shows it by taking care of me and our kids at any cost. He serves our family like a MAN should. I know my dad appreciates that. He doesn't worry about me because he knows Michael is taking care of me. I've gone way off topic and I'm sorry but my husband is a miracle in my life and I can't help but brag even though he does drive me insane sometimes like when he makes us late for a party with our family from church. He almost lost an eye that night! Anyways, just pray for me if you pray and ask God to help me REALLY forgive DJC so I can move on, and also that God will give me the strength to ignore his nasty text messages. 

My apologies if this was too raw for you but I hold nothing back. I have nothing to hide. This is me. My past has made me who I am and my present is shaping my future. My struggles are what they are and they are real. I'm not perfect, I can't even pretend to be. I'm just another pentecostal woman trying to get to heaven...