Living Happily Ever After
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Blog Articles

Certified Mail Spells Trouble

Date: March 20, 2011  Author: Andrea Merriman

“Certified mail is scary. Got one from the IRS about a month ago and my heart hit the floor. Luckily, they were just notifying me I wouldn’t get a couple of refunds that were really old.” (Alien42, online forum)

I made an appointment and met with my pastor. He was fairly new to his position and didn’t know me very well (but we certainly got to know one another well during the application process and the wait for approval!) He couldn’t have been nicer to work with, more efficient or do a better job at following up, keeping in touch with me during the wait and checking up on me as I was waiting.

We sat in his office one spring evening in May 2010 and began the application. He informed me he’d need to ask my former husband for a letter and he needed to send the request certified mail. I told him that wouldn’t be possible as my former spouse resided in jail. My pastor brainstormed about how he could do what was required and work with a former spouse in jail. He said, “Hmm. I do need a letter, maybe I could send it certified mail? Maybe to the warden?”

That panicked me. There are very specific guidelines and rules that must be followed when sending mail to jails and prisons. (Another thing I’ve learned in my unexpected life.) Envelopes have to be a certain size; specific information and ONLY that information must appear on the outside of the envelope; pages of letters are limited (at the time, no envelope could contain more than three pages inside.) When the guidelines aren’t followed, the prison inmate can get in trouble.

When my former spouse first went to jail, I received mail guidelines from his attorney. I followed them strictly, including writing “legal mail” on the outside of the envelope as the guidelines I’d received had instructed. I assumed I had to do that to show I was a law abiding citizen sending nothing illegal to a prisoner in jail!

Wrong.

The attorney had forwarded me the guidelines for legal mail–legal mail for an attorney. And Shawn Merriman almost got in a lot of trouble because I was following those guidelines, too, when I reported to him regarding our children through letters. I was afraid anything like certified mail would get my former husband in even more trouble with the jail staff. I told my pastor we just couldn’t do that, certified mail could be really bad.

But I had a solution.

I had my own letter.

I’m sure, especially as a new pastor, he never expected to encounter a situation like mine. I wish you could have seen the look on his face when I told him I already had a letter! He probably wanted to roll his eyes and say, “NOW what?” But he didn’t. He asked, with quite a bit of surprise, “You already have a letter? How did you do that?”

“I have received no more than one or two letters in my life that were worth the postage.” (Henry David Thoreau, Walden)

Magic

Date: January 16, 2011  Author: Andrea Merriman

“Her godmother simply touched her with her wand, and, at the same moment, her clothes were turned into cloth of gold and silver, all decked with jewels.” (Charles Perrault)

I’ve probably mentioned it before, but I was a girl raised on fairy tales. My mom read them to me every day. In fact, my earliest recollections of “art” are the illustrations that were in my fairy tale books. I loved every magical ending to every magical story. And I confess, I think fairy tales contributed a little bit in the formation of my dreams.

Ah, happy endings and fairy godmothers!

Have you ever wished you had a fairy godmother?

I have—on more than one occasion. As a little girl, I dreamed of a fairy godmother who would instinctively know when I needed her (aka. when I was alone and crying in my garden, let’s say), who would show up in the blink of an eye, transform me into a beautiful woman with a dazzling wardrobe, jewels and even a pair of my very own glass slippers; and then would vanish with a “poof” and maybe a little trace of glitter. But everything would be all right again. (Translation: easy.)

As I got older and life got a lot more real, visions of a way out of some of my challenges with a simple wave of a wand overshadowed any childish fantasy of fashion. Wouldn’t it be a dream to escape a trying circumstance without having to pass through it, via a magic wand? Bummer to not have a magic wand when you really need one!

The reality of life, especially the unexpected one, is that “There is no magic wand that can resolve our problems. The solution rests with our work and discipline.” (Jose Eduardo Dos Santos) Our magic wand is actually our labor. The “magic” we put to work to better ourselves or our situation; what we do to help create our fairy tale ending despite the loss of our prince, castle or pumpkin coach.

And as I think about that, and what my unexpected life has taught me is…that’s really all you need. A willingness to work hard, carry on and to never give up despite the setbacks.

Oh. And maybe a little bit of pixie dust.

What WAS I Going To Do?

Date: March 23, 2010  Author: Andrea Merriman

As I’ve said from the very beginning, my only goal was and is to do what is best for my children.  The problem? Knowing what is best for my children.  And in my case, with children of various ages, I quickly learned no one solution was a perfect fit for all of them. And no time did that become more evident than March 18, 2009.

The first day of our nightmare.

I spent that day in shock, but knew the worst was yet to come because my children were still innocently living the last moments of life as we’d known it.  They had no idea what they were coming home to at the end of the school day.  What WAS I going to do?

I consulted a friend who is a therapist by profession.  I told him the situation and he, also, asked me THE question of the day:  what are you going to do?  I told him I didn’t know; the only thing I knew was that I needed to do what was best for my children.  And instead of judging me, he responded, “Andrea, I wish all women thought that way.  If only all women, all parents,  thought that and did that, their children would be SO much better off!”

I didn’t know where I was or where I was headed for the short term, but at least for the most important thing, my children, I was on the right track. There was a lot (like everything!) I didn’t know if I had the strength or courage to do.  But doing what was best for my children was one thing I could do.

So we talked about what I thought was best for my children, how to tell my children of our new circumstances, who should tell them, and other things I was on a deadline to decide before the kids got home from school.

The plan:  somehow get through the rest of the day, but tell the kids that day, before they heard the news from anyone else or it was reported in the media.

It was a day of events so incongruous it was impossible for me to reconcile.  For example, I remember being outside with my three-year-old that afternoon.  (I wanted to be inside, emotionally dying, but life has to go on.  I had to be a mother, too, in spite of my pain.  I had to parent through the shock.  Really, I was the only parent my children had.)  I remember watching my youngest enjoy the sunshine, stopping occasionally to examine a bug or a rock or a weed or a wildflower, and returning to me with a dandelion clutched tightly in his fist.  He presented it to me with a big, innocent smile, and my heart shattered. Again.  For him and what was ahead of him.  And for me.  He had no idea how much I needed that gesture.

HOW can this day be happening?

I don’t remember if we ate dinner that night. I don’t remember if the kids had homework or if they got their homework done. But I remember the moment we gathered our family together for the last time. I remember their tears and emotional devastation.  I remember Him walking out and leaving after his announcement.

I remember being left with four children, looking to me for guidance through the morass we’d be left to navigate alone, and not having a clue how I was going to do it.

We stood in the kitchen, the kids and I, all of us in shock. Everyone looking at me with red eyes.  Everyone filled with fear and questions. My middle son was the first to speak.  It had just dawned on him.  ”Does this mean you and dad are going to get divorced?”

And before I could answer, my two oldest children answered for me.  At the very same time, one said, “YES!” and the other said, “NO.”

Jinx.

Like I said, I realized then and there no one solution was going to best for each of my children.  Which made everything instantly more challenging for me. What WAS I going to do?

Here is what I did.

I saw that my children needed time to process the shocking new developments in our life.  I saw that my 3rd grader could do this best when everything remained as close to normal as possible.  So I tried to keep things as normal as possible.

When He returned to our home late that night, and asked the question, “What do you want me to do?  Do you want me to leave?”  I allowed him to stay for the sake of our children.

If my children were going to spend the next several years (and possibly the next decade or more) without a dad, and if they were comforted having their dad in our home (and the two youngest children clearly were), I could allow them another six weeks to have a dad.  I knew they had a lifetime ahead of them without one.

We had lost everything.  My children had lost even more.  I could put my personal feelings aside and allow them that one small thing.  A father.  For another six weeks.