"Q" is for Quagmire"/ The Irish in my BoJon Heritage

I was excited when I decided to use this word for my  Alphabe Thursday  "Q" post! Although this word, quagmire, has a dual meaning, I am using it from the definition stating "an awkward, complex or hazardous situation". Some synonyms for this word include muddle, mix-up, mess, predicament, mare's nest, can of worms, quandary,tangle, Throughout this rather unusual post, you will get the meaning of this word as I tell you a very sad and difficult story. The story is awkward, it is complex and is involved many hazardous situations. We have been in the middle of a muddle and a mess with more can of worms then you would untangle with a mare's nest. I was in a Quadry over writing this and I heard my mothers voice inside my head, sometimes you just have to let go and let God....

 

Do you know the expression

It is true! Some say God gives you family as a gift! That is a tough one to take. Between my hubby and I we have some real  "boobey" prizes for relatives! I won't go into great detail but my husband is the kindest man I have met, next to my own father, and he is just solid, dependable, honest, truthful, kind. I could list traits this man has that are a mile long, he is just that decent but he was born into a phamily, that, well, frankly does not deserve him. As the middle child, my sweet man had to deal with an older brother who everyone favored because he had some sort of illness. His sister was favored because she was their only daughter and the younger brother was favored because he was the youngest. As much as I loved my late father-in-law, I don't think he did enough to cherish my husband. His mother was busy answering to her own bully of a mother that she often overlooked my sweet man. He adored his parents, both of them! That speaks volumes about his character. The man should have his picture next to the definition of "integrity"! He is just the right amount of everything that is good and decent in this world. While I am emotional and tend to get upset quickly about situations, he is quite level headed and he tries to figure the best way to handle something without going off the deep end.

 I am talking about him because it still breaks my heart that as a kid his grandmother, hateful and spiteful and unkind as she was, always told him he was worthless and he would grow up to be nothing and would probably end up in prison! Boy was that old gal off her rocker! My sweet husband has several cousins, who belong to the LDS church. The majority of them have married and stayed in their marriages. But all the favorites their grandmother had, have done nothing but make mistake after mistake. Multiple marriages, littering children across the country and never forming any sort of relationship with them. This sweet boy who grew up to be the best husband a girl could ask for, is the total opposite of what the mean old grannie thought of him. He was a typical boy, running around, playing hard and getting into a bit of mischief. He certainly was not a criminal and am I finally understanding the dysfunction of his mother's entire phamily from her parents to herself and her 4 siblings. I truly understand why my husband's siblings were and are so screwed up.

Avery Alan Robinson was the grandfather of my husband. My father-in-law was orphaned by age five as he lost both of his parents who were quite young. This grandfather was 34 when he died from complications from diabetes. I am thinking when he passed away there was very little known, if anything, about this disease. My hubby is proud to have been named after this man and his maternal grandfather too.

Avery Alan Robinson and his wife Ivy Murphy Robinson. She was a school teacher and she passed away quite young as well. I think that as a result of my father-in-law being orphaned at age five, that he was not well prepared to deal with his wife and her mother when he became a married man himself. My own mother would tell me quietly, never speak ill of the dead, but I find it very difficult to speak of my late mother-in-law. She was never very kind or caring to me and I always felt like an outsider. In fact, the only kindnesses I ever received from the immediate phamily of my husband was from his late father Carl.

My husband, being the kind of generous man that he is took in his oldest brother after his 8th marriage failed. The details are sad and shocking and all of our children learned a valuable lesson, expensive Irish whiskey and pain pills make a deadly combination. When his older brother passed away this Spring, he died alone with only their sister at his side. For her, it is all about the dramatics, so don't feel too badly about her.My husbands brother had nine children, five biological and four adopted. He had no relationship with any of them and none of them came to visit before his death. We have gotten past the chaos the man brought into our home. We have the battle scars of broken and ruined household items which we can not afford to replace. He stole from us, his made our lives difficult. He gave my husband his old car telling him what a gem it was. Ask our oldest son, about the $6,000 gem of a car he poured repair after repair  into  and the car hangs on by a thread.

I wish this had been attributed to a BoJon/sLOVEnian proverb! The words written here say  it all about my husband's sister and three of her four children..

I doubt any of these siblings would ever feel uncomfortable. Their entire lives revolved around themselves and getting what they wanted from whoever was conveniently in their path. Catchy words like "enabler" and "user" and "addict" come to mind when their name is tossed out at us.

I am uncertain you would be able to make any of these three cry in their lifetime. Unless theatrics were involved.

This is the truth. You can not make this stuff up! I have not even begun to get into my phamily dynamics!

The younger brother just packed up one day and left. After my husband had welcomed into our home, not once but twice. He is the kind of person who will leave you with a lasting memory. The first time he betrayed my Sweets he left us with a $472.72 phone bill. Calling his "supposed" model girlfriend in some foreign land.  Burned uo my brand new sofa with his dope. My mother-in-law said we hurt his feelings. Last month he stuck us with a $600 phone bill. The hubby thinks he was angry because we bought him a brand new bed to sleep in, and he thought when our youngest headed back to college he was going to take over his T.V. When Nick went to college three years ago, our older son Jeremy bought his little brother a T.V. So it was not our T.V. to giveaway. When your mother coddles you , the U.S. Navy provides your housing as well as clothing and all amenities you assume it is something everyone owes you! When your friends are drug addicts and alcoholics and you have a stroke, one has to wonder, why was poor Johnny having such a run of bad luck? Neither he or the older brother attended their own mother's funeral. It is something that picks at my brain everyday. You have to remember these were mama's favorites. They were her golden sons. My husband was the loser, the nothing, the nobody. Yet he was asked to give a eulogy about his mother and many, many times he paid out of his own pocket for legal documents needed to settle her estate while the others were searching high and low for more money, more money.  You may get the money, you may find the money but if you die tonight, they will not take that money with you to your grave!

1 Timothy 6:10New American Standard Bible (NASB)

10 For the love of money is a root of all [a]sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

Proverbs 15:12  

A scoffer does not like to be reproved; he will not go to the wise.

I already had someone at Facebook throw this in my face:

These are all the same people defending gay marriage rights or the ones defending the County Clerk in Kentucky. It is old news at social media sites and frankly I am done with it. I quote the bible because I have read it. I hate that I slip and stumble every single day and I am not the Christian I would like to be. But when I speak my mind I feel free and I can let go of the bitterness and betrayal. Unless it has happened to you, it is difficult to explain.

I want to say I know my husband feels sadness at the loss of these siblings. Although only the eldest brother has passed away, he has severed ties with the other two.  After you have been taken advantage of time and time again, you stop and look at the people around you that love you and truly care for you and you realize these users are the ones that are bitter and angry and filled with grief and denial and hatefulness. My mother would often say "You can lead a horse to water, but you can not force him to drink". You can extend a kind heart and loving hand but when one refuses to be helped you have to breathe and step away. Drug addicts and alcoholics can not be helped unless they themselves want to be helped. It is such a sad disease/

Romans 12:20King James Version (KJV)

20 Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.

Ephesians 4:31-32New American Standard Bible (NASB)

31 Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. 32 Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven [a]you

1 Timothy 5:8  

But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

Like my own father this verse means what it says to my husband. He told me he was sorry that his siblings were no longer worth fighting for but he did what he was taught by his own father to do, and it is really all he wanted to say about it the whole ordeal. He thought he had been fair to them and he felt he was proper to try to help them in their time of need.

I am learning each day to let go and let God. I am taking all that bitterness and I am spreading joy and encouragement elsewhere. Do you know the hardest thing you can do? Pray for those that deceive you, pray for the users, the abusers, the enablers, the drama queens, the liars. It is a difficult process but with my Sweets at my side I have no doubt that this too we shall overcome.

If you feel offended that I wrote this I will share some wise words from a very dear friend Chris Weides-Goss, "Having you all for my friends saved me thousands of dollars in long term therapy."

This may not be the BoJon post you expected but once I share the second half of this story tomorrow perhaps you will see the whole picture. Perhaps some of you may see yourself here. People never want to admit their weaknesses. They don't like to share their "phamily difficulties". But sometime when you let it all go and spill it out, you feel free and you feel as if you might just survive and be able to go on.

This post was not directly about our beloved BoJon neighborhood but I am that BoJon girl that married an Irishman, and he is the best man in the whole world.

Until tomorrow: