Behind The Scenes Before Court

As some of you may know, I have been in pretty consistent court battles with my ex (whom we will call Mr. X) since we divorced ten years ago. Bottom line…it’s hard to divorce and get away from a psychopath. Maybe one day I’ll write a book just about what I’ve learned! In fact, this post is going to have to be broken into at least two posts because there is just so much that happened! Today’s will be about what happened before we made it to the courtroom and then tomorrow I will post about our day in court.

Our recent courtroom battle was regarding parenting time, legal decision-making power, and child support. It took over twenty months to get to trial, primarily because of all the delays caused by a certain somebody. We would go to a Status Conference in court about every six weeks, which ended up helping because true colors were starting to show. We were both on our own, attorney-less.

Days before our trial, I received an email stating he was willing to consider any proposal I would send that would avoid court. Hmmm…unusual. I replied back that the only proposal I would send would include him losing his parenting time and legal decision-making and asked if he would be willing to consider agreeing… I wasn’t expecting a response. However, I ended up getting one two days later that said yes…he would consider it.

While waiting for him to write up a formal proposal, before going to bed that night, I prayed and asked God to make it VERY clear to me whether or not I was supposed to go to trial. My prayer was that I was willing to do whatever would give God the most glory. Right after handing it over to God in prayer, I pulled out my Bible, not expecting an answer right away, but God gave me one anyway. I randomly picked Psalm 23 to start reading in. When I got to the verse that said he would prepare a feast before me in the presence of my enemies, I began to wonder if God meant me to apply that verse to my life. I decided…Nah…I mean I wasn’t looking for an answer right then, just whenever I received the email. I kept reading…it seemed like verse after verse were referring to liars being revealed and integrity winning out. When I got to chapter 26: 1-2, I KNEW I had my answer…

Declare me innocent, O Lord,
for I have acted with integrity;
I have trusted in the Lord without wavering.
Put me on trial, Lord, and cross-examine me.
Test my motives and my heart.

Minutes before I had been asking God whether or not I needed to go to trial. The answer was obvious. No matter what Mr. X sent me, I already knew the response God wanted from me. This made it so much easier when he did send two proposals…one saying he would give up his parenting time with a bunch of conditions in exchange for child support; the second offering he would sign off on the children permanently. This second one was hard to turn down because it would guarantee future freedom for my girls. However, since God had given me such a clear answer, I knew He had an even better plan for them!