I Wish We Had Gone To A Cabin In The Wilderness For New Years!

This New Years just brought more heartache and sadness to our family. We traveled to up-state New York to be with Scott's family for the Holiday's. We go maybe once a year because of scheduling issues and family issues. This time was the worst experience to date.

The Lord kept telling us to get a hotel room and not stay at his parents house. I wasn't convinced especially since my medical bills all came due in December. I knew we just didn't have the extra but Scott insisted we had to this time. Low and behold it definitely was the Lord. When we arrived in NY we walked into chaos and dysfunction. To try and not go into any gory details lets just say unknown to us my husbands parents have 3 families living in their home besides themselves and his youngest brother. 6 adults, 5 children, 5 dogs, 4 cats and a big mess. Then across the street where his sister is supposed to be living her soon-to-be ex-husband is now taking up residence. He is violent and abusive. Every time she had to take the kids over to their father some one had to walk with her for her protection.

Well, things were just plain ugly the entire weekend. It finally culminated with an act of violence against one of our boys. Unfortunately Scott's sister's son has seen too much violence between his mother and father and now lashes out in anger towards others. For some reason he targeted DK for the weekend. DK did great about coming to us when the young man began to beat on him but DK reached his limit Saturday morning. Our three boys were playing nicely with one of Scott's good brothers (actually all Scott's brothers are really nice to our boys) when the cousin decked DK in the mouth. That was it. DK turned and cold clocked the young man in the face. This is were it got ugly though. Scott's brother was wrestling with the boys while this was happening and was not able to see what transpired. Scott's brother-in-law walked in on the situation and only saw DK hit his cousin. Scott's brother-in-law punched DK in the side of the head.

We were in the other room cleaning up breakfast when the brother-in-law came in looking for ice for our nephew and told us about our "bad" child. Well, I flew into the other room and found out the whole story. It didn't go down pretty but Scott's family sure knows now not to touch one of our kids ever again. Thankfully the Lord held my tongue enough not to be vulgar or mean but I sure laid it out there what I thought of the situation. So did Scott he just said I gave it a bit more with passion.

Needless to say we came home directly and are very leery about ever going back. DK is doing well. We prayed with him last night and the two other boys because they were ready to throtle their Uncle for what he did. Scott and I needed some prayer too because we wanted to retaliate also but what is that showing our kids...violence for more violence. Part of Scott's family is defending the brother-in-law and part of his family is standing with us. The hard part is the level of violence that entire family lives with on a daily basis. They truly believed that the Uncle was just disciplining. In my book that's not discipline at all.

It's truly sad. We now have lost the little bit of family left that we had because of their choice to live in this violent and dysfunctional lifestyle. Honestly, they are destroying themselves and everyone around them. The dysfunction is so far reaching in to Scott's family. DK had a great revelation from the Lord last night that satan took over Uncle A's heart when he hit him. DK said the Lord told him that he could forgive him because he is not fighting Uncle A. but satan inside of him. We told DK that is actually written in the Bible. Here our little guy forgave his Uncle and prayed that Jesus would enter his heart instead. What a difference in our lives compared to the violence we witnessed over this past weekend.

So today we are all on the mend. We are kind of morning the loss of our biological family and the trust that was broken this weekend. We are however rejoicing in our spiritual family. You just don't know how much that means to us. We feel more love and safety in those we know in the Body of Christ then the families we were born into. I'm tired now.:-( It's been a long New Years weekend. Not the way we wanted to celebrate a fresh, new Year.