Answered Prayer, Alienation and the Ant Invasion

  Thank you to everyone who sent us good thoughts and prayers.  After a long and worrisome weekend, our loved one that was in the hospital is home.  We had gotten a call from them on Saturday and after they told me what was going on I insisted we take them in to be seen.  I am so glad we did. They had been feeling badly for 2 weeks and it was getting worse.  We were lucky, we got them in just in time.

  While all this was going on, anger and resentment from another family member towards us just got worse.  It did bring some things to the surface though and we have finally realized that this situation with this certain family member cannot be resolved because they will never let go of their anger, fear, resentment and jealousy and instead of facing their own demons, they instead demonize me.  I have not been their only target, but they have not been able to totally destroy my relationship with others in the family as they have with someone else.  For years I, and my husband, have been lied about.  They went after our marriage, our parents, our kids and and now even our grandkids.  The stress of it all took a huge toll on our marriage and on my health.  The situation became so toxic that we almost walked away from it all, but given certain circumstances, that would have meant not being able to have contact with other family members who have been deeply hurt by this whole mess also.  We could not do that.  We limit contact with the source of the issue as much as possible and are kind when we see them, but that is NEVER returned.  Even with a health crisis of a loved one, this person could not stand to even be in the same room as us and was very angry at us that we were the ones who got our mutual loved one help.  Things will be getting worse because we still have more health crises that we are dealing with in the family and there will have to be some changes made for the health and safety of our loved ones.  I'm sure that most families have some kind of dysfunction in them....our just seems to be on the "crazy soap operas" scale of things.

    After dealing with the nastiness and pettiness of that person, we then had to deal with an actual ant invasion in our home later last night.  My husband was getting ready to go to work and saw a few ants on the kitchen counter.  Then he looked down on the floor and it was "moving".  YUCK!  Ants everywhere and they were spreading out to the rest of the house.  We did not have any bug spray so we quickly called our friends/hanai family next door and Shannon came to our rescue.  She brought over bug bombs and got me and the fur babies out of the house since I and our cat are especially sensitive to chemicals.  She, bless her heart, set off the foggers for us since Jeff had to leave for work and then she came back over to open up the house and air it out for me since I could not go in it until it was completely aired out.  I tell you, this woman went above and beyond for us and we love her dearly and feel so blessed to have her in our lives.

   Today I am spending the day washing all the towels, napkins, etc. that were affected by the bug bombs/foggers and washing down surfaces.  My laundry line is full at the moment and round two of the laundry will be going out there as soon as the first 3 loads are dried.  I also have bread going in the breadmaker and need to get out in the gardens and harvest some lettuce and strawberries.  It is going to be in the low 90's today, but will start a cooling trend tomorrow.  Thank you Jesus!

   Anyway, I may be sporadic in my blog posts for awhile again as we deal with all the things that are going on and trying to get answers and help for our loved ones and having to deal with the added stress of the conflict within the family.  Thank you again for your prayers and good thoughts.  We are just at the beginning of a long road filled with sinkholes I fear.