This is not a real cheerful Christmas this year, as we struggle to understand and move forward with the results of Anthony’s brother’s actions.

But it is still a joyful season. We are saved and secure, no matter what happens here we know where will spend eternity and we are loved by a Holy and Awesome God.

While we were all here the weekend after Christmas I got our Christmas Ladder tree up. I am spoiled by how easy it is to put so many cool decorations on the tree. We don’t have a lot of flat surfaces waiting for decorations in the rest of the house, so this year I even put our nativity scene on the tree. (Someone kept inviting Tigger to the nativity.

I didn’t leave an empty spot, but one of the items on the tree is a soft bag and Bluetooth has found that spot quite satisfactory.

My favorite addition to my Christmas decorations this year is the fantastic Christmas Wreath that Edie made for me!

Hopefully no birds will build a nest in this wreath (I guess that means I need to take it down earlier than I did last year).

Thursday night while in Raleigh I got to go hear my nephew singing with his Chorus group. A fine way to begin the season.

Tomorrow night, of course, is our Cantata at Church. Last Monday was a covered dish dinner with some good friends. This coming Monday is a Christmas party / ornament exchange. Family get-together next Saturday. Tis the season. I am very happy to say that we’ve done a better job this past year of staying in touch with family and friends, so this isn’t the only month of the year that we get to see each other. I expect to make next year even better!!

Stay warm and spend time remembering how blessed you are!

It’s a great line. It falls under the concept of allowing the other person’s feelings to be validated as real, and accepting that the person feels that way is a good step toward opening communication back up. But the next thing you do determines whether you really mean it or not. If you then let me express that anger and why I am angry and if necessary, explain what I’m not understanding or taking into account, then you really are following through.

But if your next step is to say you are very angry, refuse to make eye contact or listen to what is being said, and stop talking about the issue, then you really haven’t validated my feelings at all. You’ve closed me off and told me I don’t have a right to have feelings about whatever is happening to me.

And my first response is that Dave has no right to be angry about anything, he started all of this with his actions. And he should have known how Alison and the boys, and we would react, so he should have been ready for it. Besides, we’re just trying to talk to him, figure out what he’s thinking, and tell him why we think this is a bad idea.

A more tempered response is that he obviously can be angry, since he is. Perhaps he didn’t think it through and was surprised to find out that not only were people angered and hurt by his actions but actually expected him to talk about it and change his behavior. Preferably change his behavior enough to come home and live his life again. At least stand up and accept responsibility for his behavior and the damage it is doing and work with the people he is hurting to get through this.

But he is the one that opened with the line and then he refused to listen or to respond as if he really felt his son or wife or the rest of us actually had a right to be angry. Or at least that we had a right to express how we felt and why we felt that way and then actually get some useful response from him.

Over the past two days David has commented that his oldest son has been hostile on the 2 visitations and then indicated that he doesn’t want him on the next visitation as a result. Yet, this is actually one of the first people Dave admitted should be angry, and that time in the driveway Dave even said he was surprised the young man wasn’t even angrier than he seemed to be. He’s 15, a teenager, old enough to understand what is going on, and to feel betrayed by the man he called Dad. Like us, he wants answers. Yet when he has stated his feelings, Dave has accused us of coaching him, as if he isn’t capable of feeling this pain and anger all by himself. And when he expresses his anger that Dave won’t talk to or answer the questions of the younger boys, Dave calls it hostile and instead of talking to him simply states he doesn’t want him there.

David is a life coach. He’s someone you call up and work with to help make yourself better, achieve more, and live your dreams. There are things we hold on to, agonize over, and keep dragging around that a life coach has to help us realize should just be let go and walked away from. But there are also things we avoid, ignore, keep procrastinating about dealing with. Here is where the life coach guides you to stand up and face the situation or person or weakness or fear. David seems to be telling himself (and I supposed getting reinforced by someone) that he should just walk away from his family and the quicker the better. For an abused spouse, that may be the way to go (and you don’t leave the kids behind). But for a man to walk out because he wants to be selfish and wants to focus on his business, it is not right or profitable to avoid dealing with the pain and damage he leaves in his wake.

…?

I’ve had a very few people say that perhaps we aren’t being fair to Dave, or that he doesn’t deserve they way we’re treating him. As people say, there are always 2 sides to the story.

I am not sure how what any of us have done is not fair to Dave. So far, Alison has asked him to come home, to see his boys, and to tell her what she did that was so horrible that he can’t live with her or talk to his boys with her around.

Anthony’s website has been from the perspective that as a Christian Dave once felt that what he is doing right now is very wrong. Dave has stated many times through his life that he would never divorce and that his greatest fear was his family breaking up like his did as a child. If we feel that he is doing something that he will someday regret, and if he can’t explain to us why this makes sense, we just don’t want to have him ask us why we didn’t even try to stop him. If what we say shames or embarrasses him, then I guess that shows he does still understand at some level that it is wrong to just walk out of a marriage and stop all communication with family. If he truly doesn’t care, and if the people he does business with don’t think his personal life should interfere with his business life, then he shouldn’t be affected by any of what we are doing. We aren’t trying to just shame him, we want him to rethink and see the results of what he is doing.

My blog entries are more sharing what I’m thinking and feeling and what Alison is thinking and feeling, but I think all of them have shown that we just want to know why he is doing this and that it hurts. I don’t actually expect them to affect Dave, but I do hope maybe someone else reading them will realize that this is a very painful thing to do to someone.

As for there being another side to the story, we aren’t hearing it. He won’t talk to his family (remember, he’s threatened by Anthony), or old friends, or his former pastor. I assume he’s talking to his business associates, but that won’t help us since none of them are likely to call up and help explain it to us.

He’s stopped posting on his blog and made a comment to his lawyer that his business is being affected. I had to laugh at that. Anthony’s website has had a total of 241 visitors in the past 3 weeks. I suspect many of those are people who follow Anthony on Facebook or Twitter, so people who have never worked with or known Dave. Family are seeing it, but those lines were drawn years ago I think. My posts have actually had an average of 20 visits, which I admit is quite a few more than I thought. Either way, compared to the 7,871 Twitter followers and blog followers that Dave has, we aren’t even a drop in the bucket. Searching for Dave Navarro (and skipping all those about the rocker), Rock Your Day or Launch Coach all bring up his sites, but the first 4o or 5 pages of results at least don’t bring up Anthony’s website. And I’m just not convinced that the people who do business with or follow Dave care about what he’s done.

So, let’s review what we’ve done – we’ve played with his sons, comforted his wife (and took her to the hospital when she was dehydrated), helped get her van fixed, run kids to a few events when she had to be in a different direction, and sat with Alison while she cries. Anthony and I and the oldest son tried to talk to Dave one night, and Anthony  made a number of phone calls one night while driving to Raleigh for another visit. (David didn’t answer.) And Anthony has put up a website that has been fruitless as far as we can see.

I guess we should have left Alison crying, called up Dave to congratulate him on such a stellar move, and gone about our lives.

This weekend at our house, I kept looking at the photos of my sister’s children. I never really understood why she walked out, or why she left her children behind when she did it. But we also jumped in to help that time. I helped take care of the boys, reminded Duncan (he was 1 year old the day after she left) that I was not Mommy, tried to coordinate visits and phone calls when she wasn’t nearby to visit. Again, I know there were two sides to that story, but I never really understood her side. I don’t know if she couldn’t express it in a way for me to understand or if I just haven’t experienced a relationship so stifling that leaving everything behind is the only way to get out, without turning to family for support. I loved her and still love her, but she seemed to be taking care of herself so I tried to take care of her boys. Partly because someone needed to do it, and partly because it seemed to be all that I could do for her at the time.

In an older time, when family wasn’t scattered all over the state or the country, sisters and parents and cousins would have done the same thing, it just wouldn’t get much remark. Family steps in to take care of family. The one who walks away and won’t talk is harder to take care of, sometimes all we can do is try to protect and love the ones they left behind.

As I’ve said, we do a lot of talking trying to figure out how Dave could do this after 10 years of marriage and seeming to be happy for much of that time. So, for all our Trek friends, this should be familiar. We have a theory that this is the alternate Dave and the real Dave, the nice, good, loving Dave, is trapped in some alternate universe. This, of course, started with the original Star Trek series in the Mirror Mirror episode where a transporter mishap swaps Captain Kirk and crew with their evil counterparts in a parallel universe.

Or maybe it’s really like the movie The Last Starfighter, and this is the Beta Dave filling in his place while the Real Dave is out fighting to save the Galaxy.

Yeah, sounds wild, but no more wild than thinking Dave would ever do what he’s doing.

One thing David told the school counselor that first Friday after he left was that he and Alison were best friends. Alison agrees completely with that part, even if the rest of what he said doesn’t make sense.

Alison keeps saying that she misses Dave. She misses hearing him sing in the shower, trying to move around him in the kitchen, just knowing he is there. He would play lego with the boys in the morning before school or in the evening before bed. He would rub her knee when the arthritis flared up. He would rub her back when it ached, and hold her close while they slept. Just seeing him look across the room and even wink at her – she misses all of it. She misses hearing his voice.

Today while we were hanging around our house, Anthony kicked back and took a nap, which means he snored. That’s a familiar noise and the sound made Alison miss Dave even more. We have photos for the screen saver on the family computer here and we keep seeing photos of David with the kids and of their wedding. It is so nice to see the pictures of happier times, but it also feeds the question again “why is he doing this?”

I am growing a new and deeper appreciation of my husband through this. Sure, some of the things he does annoy me or even frustrate me, but under and around and through all that I do love him. I love hearing his voice, seeing him talk to someone, or help someone, or even napping on the couch. I know that anything I face he’ll be there with me, with words and actions and just his presence.

Alison is facing an incredibly hard time and she is having to do it without her best friend. The second hardest part of this, after not really understanding why Dave is doing this, is that she doesn’t have Dave’s support and encouragement and help.

As I have spent time at Alison’s house, I have missed having my husband nearby, but at least I knew he was still my husband, taking care of things at our house, and just a phone call, email, or text away until the next time we could be together. Alison has lost that, and it looks like it is a permanent loss. Right now communication between Alison and Dave is rare, formal, and focused on a specific subject. He doesn’t call her by name in the emails, and he doesn’t refer to her or her feelings or what she is going through. She has reread the text messages they exchanged from a few weeks before he left, and that is the last time she’ll ever have him tell her he loves her. Those impromptu conversations and expressions of love are ended, they won’t happen again.

Each time they communicate now, or the lawyers communicate, or the boys mention their Dad, or a friend asks how she’s holding up, it brings all the pain back to the front again. And with all of that is the question of whether Dave is missing his best friend. When he came to pick up the boys for the visit, did he avoid looking at Alison because he knew it would hurt to see her and not be able to talk to her? Or was it guilt that he is hurting her so deeply with his actions? Or because it’s easier to not get into the emotional side of this and just do the practical?

Where is Dave and what is he thinking?