Happy Third Second Anniversary!!!!

Today is our third Second Anniversary. And that's a long story. To make my life easier I am just going to copy/paste the email that I sent to the Texas Knitting list.

(disclaimer….long story….as you can see…..and religious ideals presented…….you may want to delete if you don’t want to read either of those! LOL)

Thanks Dawn!!

I dying sick with a cold/flu that my step-daughter was generous enough to share with me! LOL!

She’s 21 and left her husband (we are SOOO thrilled she saw the light) and moved back home with us. She moves into her apartment 2 blocks from us next week. My 18yo daughter is flying down here to so that she can be here when my oldest one redeploys from Iraq on Christmas Eve/Christmas Morning…..the flight times are still up in the air….um, no pun intended.

Our house is packed to the gills…….don’t forget our 3 cats and 2 dogs and my step-daughter’s cat! LOL!!!!

About our anniversary………it’s a weird story and I will try to make it short.

We became neighbors with Jim and Dottie in 1992 when we moved onto Fort Hood. Our kids grew up together and were friends. We moved to a different house, and they did too, but we kinda stayed in touch thru the kids seeing each other at school etc. Dottie passed away suddenly at the age of 43 on Veteran’s Day in ’03. I was on the verge of a divorce at that time also. Little did I know that Jim and Dottie’s marriage was pure hell on earth (we have since found out that she was abusing the kids while he was stationed overseas….like REALLY abusing….like the worst things a parent can do to a child…….and now both kids say the best thing that ever happened to them is their mother dying and their dad and I getting married (stepson is 15, stepdaughter is 21). Of course, Jim had no idea that what I was going thru with David either. One thing led to the next and before I knew it I realized that I had found my other half (sounds nauseating, but it’s true).

David made the divorce a living hell. Agreeing to one thing then filing the opposite. It was horrible.

FINALLY, we had date set at the end of August for the court hearing. By that time I was living in Jim’s house (yes, scarlet, but I knew I was going to marry him and I had no where else to live. David had beat the living crap out of me and I couldn’t stay at my house. Our (then 15 year old) daughter wanted to live with him, so he couldn’t live in the barracks…..I was the one that needed to move out….anyway…….) and were planning on getting married as soon as we could.

On Aug 24^th, 2005, the judge swore us in, we testified that we agreed with everything in the decree and he then granted the divorce. Now, in TX you have to wait 30 days after a div to remarry unless you have a waiver from a judge. I didn’t want to wait the 30 days because I didn’t want my anniv to be ‘during the holidays’ as I told Jim…………if it’s during the holidays, then we will never be able to just take off and do something. So the same judge gave me the waiver and we got the license.

On September 1^st we stood with a few of our kids (step-daughter boycotted but has since come around and we are now very close), oldest son got deployed that very afternoon to New Orleans for Katrina duty, second son was in Iraq) and were married by our neighbor who is a minister. The next day my daughter calls me and says “Are you and dad divorced????” I told her of course we were….she was my witness the day before….and I told her that the judge would not have granted me the waiver to marry if I wasn’t divorced….in other words, the courts would not have issued the marriage license if things were not final. “Well dad says that you are still married and that he won’t sign the papers because he doesn’t agree with them” (He’s the king of Passive-Aggressive behavior……he will swear in court that he’s fine with the agreement…..but won’t sign the paperwork…GRRRRRRRRR!!!!!)

That was a whole big ordeal that meant going back to court on Sept 29th and having the judge overrule his lack of signature. I asked the judge then, if I was legally married to Jim and he said yes…in the eyes of Texas you were legally married to him on Sept 1^st.

OK.

Yeah, right!

So on Oct 10^th my new social security card came and we went on Fort Hood to get my new Military ID under Jim’s name. They looked at the paperwork and said that the div date was Sept 29^th and that we couldn’t be married because the marriage took place before the div date. We even had the judge fax them……nope. The federal govt has to look at the LAST date on the div papers and that was Sept 29^th. Finally…..after being there for 8 hours (6 hours waiting for our number to be called…2 hours of wrangling) it came down to them making us get married again…..they would not accept the marriage license from the 1^st. So we drove as fast as we could to the courthouse (30 miles away) and tried to get another license. The same ladies were there and they thought we were joking. Then they told us that they couldn’t give us another license because we were already married. We went around and around with them trying to figure out what to do. They called in the supervisor……….and I have to say that they were doing everything they could within the rules……and that they were wonderful ladies…..and by that time we were all laughing our butts off at this stupid situation……….probably only to keep from crying on my part!!!!!

So, they finally decided to lie to the computer. She HAS to ask the questions on the application (Are you currently married? Are you behind on any court ordered child support? Etc) and if she puts the ‘wrong’ answer in the computer it refuses to spit out the license. So she lied to the computer and told it that we WEREN’T currently married and it spit one out. Then they took white-out and changed the answer to “Yes” and put in parentheses “to each other” and issued it. They thought it was the funniest thing in the world….and they made the whole thing a lot easier. Then I called my neighbor and asked him to marry us again. ROFL!. So he came next door in his sweats while we were running late for the step-son’s football game and did the “Do you” “Do you” thing real quick and signed off on it. My oldest son was back from New Orleans and he was our witness (even though you don’t need one in TX)….so he got to be there for THAT marriage. End of story…right?

Wrong!

Jim grew up Catholic…..choir boy, altar boy etc etc the whole nine yards. I was baptized Catholic and raised Pentacostal. (my mother remarried when I was very young) Even though I was living with Jim while I was going thru the div (I feel so hugely guilty about that…..but, that’s over and forgiven….anyway) God has always been a huge part of my life………even though I rarely attended church during my 20 year marriage to David. Jim left the church when he got married….and turned his back on God as his marriage worsened. He blamed God for all the unhappiness. After we got together I worked on that one. I told him that HE chose to marry Dottie and that God didn’t force him etc.

One day he said to me “why don’t we start going to church?” I almost fell over! That was huge for him. Keep in mind he knows I’m pentacostal…..and very anti-Catholic. BUT, even though I had been anti-Catholic all my life, there’s always been something about it that drew me to the Catholic Church. I loved watching Mother Angelica….I loved Pope John Paul II, but was very much against worshipping Mary and statues etc (misinformation that I had been led to believe growing up)

So all this time going thru the div I’m wanting to get back in church too…..but it’s kinda hard when you feel like a Scarlet Harlot! LOL! Anyway, *SOMETHING* kept nagging at me to really investigate Catholicism and see what they REALLY believe. That’s a whole long story in itself, but the ending was that I became convinced of its’ validity and converted….reverted? The chuch welcomed us with open arms and I was confirmed last year.

So we had to get our marriage convalidated by The Church. Which happened on December 21^st, 2005….um….2 years ago today. Soooooooooooooooooo……………..

The first marriage was for the State of Texas.

The second marriage was for the Federal Government.

And the third marriage was for God.

And that’s The Rest Of The Story………

Thanks, all for the anniversary wishes!!!

-Grandma Dawn in Killeen