Have you ever found yourself in the midst of a real life horror movie?

 

Personally, I hate horror movies. I never watch anything scary because I don't like to be scared.  I don't watch sad movies, either, because I don't like to be sad!  I'm just not one to submit myself to crying  through a movie, or to feel adrenaline while watching a suspense movie. I just want it to be light.  Maybe it's because I think real life has enough sad and scary things in it that I don't need to be "entertained" by anything more depressing and horrifying than what happens in every day life all around me in the real world.

 

I have always been like this, for as long as I can remember. Even way back when I was newly married and with little children, if we had couples over (usually other family members) and we were all watching a movie, and a little old lady was just about to be killed, or something bad about to happen to a child, I would leave the room. And then, I'd stay out. I wasn't worried about being "sociable."  I just didn't want to fill my mind with scary and depressing things.

 

It would be the same when we went to a movie theater with other couples. Here, we paid money to get in and see the movie. If I decided this movie was just too dark and gloomy, too depressing, too anything on the negative side, I'd excuse myself to go use the restroom, and then just never come back in. I'd sit out in the lobby and amuse myself with all the different kinds of people coming through the doors. Again, I didn't worry about being unsociable, I just didn't want to watch the movie.

 

As far as sad movies go, I can't even watch Anne of Green Gables. Remember the sweet old man that died in the movie? I only watched it once, so I'm sorry, I can't remember his name, but now I'm vaguely recalling that it was Matthew.  He was married to the woman that took Anne home, to adopt her, even though what she had really wanted was a boy.  Anyway, back to the story line, when he died, I couldn't separate fiction from my real life.  I had loved the old gentleman so much, vicariously through the movie, (perhaps because he reminded me so much of my own dad), that I cried for days and days, unable to stop!  I told myself, "It's just a movie!"  But I couldn't shake my weeping for days. I would never watch that movie again because of the effect it had on me, although it's a positively lovely movie, otherwise.

 

Or the original classic movie, Cheaper by the Dozen. A woman suggested I get that movie because of my big family (in comparison to hers), and she told me it was just so funny. So, I got the movie, and yes, I loved it, it was truly wonderful. That is, until the very end. I had been told this movie was a comedy, so I wasn't expecting the most remotely negative thing. But to conclude the movie, shockingly to me, the father of the twelve children died suddenly of a heart attack!! I was mortified! Shocked!! This is a comedy?! A woman of 12 children left widowed? After shock, I became angry at this movie. I stormed out of the room, went into the bathroom and slammed the door behind me, and then, just wept.  Although a great movie up to that point, I really do hate it, just because of the ending.

 

So, now you know, I'm extremely sensitive!  But sometimes, you find yourself "inside" what seems like a horror movie, and you must witness it, you must actually live it, you cannot so simply turn the t.v. off, you must walk through it and watch it whether you like it or not.

 

Such is what has recently happened to me. My little, sweet and innocent, sensitive and very sheltered, 13 year old niece, that I have with me every other weekend and 3 weeks out of the summer, has been thrown into a horror movie and all I can do is "watch," and I am helpless. She is the victim of a bitter divorce, my brother being her father. You know the classic terrible divorces, the mother hates the father, the mother uses the children as tools of her own poisonous bitterness.  Such is the story of the life of my niece. 

 

Two weeks ago, she admitted to her mother, afraid to do so before this very moment in her life, that she really did love her father. Her mother, in a fit of rage, told her to "then go live with him."  She called her dad, crying, asking him to come pick her up. He could hear her mother screaming in the background, "Go live with your father!"  He hurried into his car and drove off to get her, a two hour drive. 

 

Now, to digress here just a bit, at the time of the initial divorce, when my niece was three years old, and her sister, a six month old baby, the mother tried to keep the children from ever seeing their dad again. He had to fight through the legal system to get the right to have visitation, but by the time he finally went through all the legal system, it was several years.  I can't tell you how much I prayed for him that he would be able to see his children and be able to be their father and that the justice system would prevail. Although finally granted the legal right to see his children regularly, sharing joint custody, the mother still refused to cooperate. Twice, after going before the judge, she was sentenced to go to jail for violating the decreed divorce settlement, but my brother, being the passive one that he is, felt no sense of revenge, only a concern for what was right for these little two girls, and he felt that what was best for them was not to have a mommy in jail. So, twice, because of his compassion, although the judge decreed her guilty with a jail sentence, she was alleviated of ever serving a day in jail.

 

After the second time of being sentenced, she finally began to cooperate and a relationship has been miraculously been built, between a father and his two daughters. But the hate and bitterness has lingered on with the mother of the children, begrudgingly sharing them with him on an every other weekend basis.  The two girls were afraid to admit to their mother that they 'liked' their dad, let alone, 'loved' him.  My oldest niece, the one to which I write about now, had told me that she could never tell her mother because she feared what she would do to her. 

 

And then, it happened. She told her. In a fit of anger, the mother told her to go live with her dad. But, once she realized that the daughter really wanted to live with him, and then, he was coming for her, he was driving to come pick her up, she panicked.  She took my niece and had her admitted into a psychiatric ward of a hospital claiming that she was suicidal.

 

My sweet, innocent, and sheltered niece, admitted to a psychiatric ward, is where the real life horror movie begins. Did I mention that my precious niece is homeschooled?  No, not like you and me, the way we homeschool our children.  No, the mother of this child is a high profile career woman, managing many in the computer fields, making over $100,000 a year.  My niece's "homeschooling" consisted of being left alone in her house, day after day, for almost two years.  Although raised in a non-Christian environment, she was extremely sheltered.

 

My niece, over Christmas, confided in us, that she lived in fear on a daily basis of her mother. She described to us verbal and other abuses, and I began to realize that this was a serious situation, but, never in my wildest dreams, or nightmares, would I have thought her mother would have her admitted into a psychiatric ward, lying and manipulating, in a fit of rage and an act of anger towards her, and my nieces only "sin" being that she loved her father.

 

She was taken in her jammies, they strip searched her, cutting off any ties on her jammies to "keep her from killing herself."  They took her earrings (my niece has always been very careful of protecting her newly pierced ears from closing, this had to have been traumatic in itself).  They gave her a little, thin, blanket to sleep with, so she "wouldn't try to strangle herself with a blanket," and she shivered all night.  She's never spent a night outside of her own home, her father's, or ours. And now, her first night foreign to the life she had always known, she spent in a cold, sterile environment, with a little thin blanket to warm herself in. There are bars on the windows, and the windows themselves have been filmed in order that one cannot see out.  There are "real" problems all around her. Troubled teens that really have tried to kill themselves. Teens that are on drugs, she has now found herself surrounded with. As she laid in her room, she could hear people walking the halls,  yelling and hallucinating.  I pictured my scared little niece, the one who seemingly not that long ago, would clutch her little stuffed fox, every time she came to our home, until it literally wore out.  I wanted to just be able to "turn the t.v. off",  or to "walk out of the movie," but I could not. It was real. It was like a horror movie, and my niece, the star in this horrifying scene.

 

 I have been told that the mother of my niece, has lied and manipulated the counselors and psychologists that they meet with each day, that her daughter is the one with the problems, and even went as far to tell them that my niece had killed her own pet hamster.  They put my niece on drugs.

 

Have you ever seen the movie, Mommy Dearest?  Truthfully, I have not. I have only read movie reviews and gotten the jest of it. To me, my niece is living the movie, Mommy Dearest, and she is but a helpless victim.  I have always, personally, been afraid of those government "child advocates." But, suddenly, I am seeing where my niece could sure use one.  It's her little 13 year old voice, against her mother's some 40 years of knowing how to work the system. She acts all loving and like a concerned mother when the hospital staff is watching, and then, when no one else is around, just her and her "traitor" daughter, the one that has just admitted that she loves her dad, she is cold and bitter, All of this, to her, is a justified sentence for a daughter that has committed "the unforgivable sin."

 

My little niece, when she left my house 2 weeks ago, and just two days later, was admitted into this, what she terms, "Prison sentence," her life was turned upside down.  Who could have seen this coming? This coming Monday will begin her third week of this sentence.  Have your ever watched those movies where someone admits a perfectly normal person into an insane asylum, then they begin to drug them, and the person, previously perfectly sane, is now drugged and unable to communicate, prisoner to the system?  This is the real life of my 13 year old niece.

 

My heart was so heavy. All I could think about was her. I would wake in the morning, and pray before I ever left my bed.  I'd pray when I had my coffee, pray as I walked along the day, pray as I laid my head on my pillow. So helpless, her, and me too. There was nothing I could do for her, although infuriated, on the one hand, that her mother had done this, and on the other hand, scared for her.  How could such an unjustified thing happen like this?  Such unfair things do happen in life.

 

I was so worried, so fretful. Finally, I shared my burden with our church family.  Dear Baghya, she reminded me of how God protected Daniel, although thrown into the furnace of fire, and then into the lion's den, was unscathed. God can do anything, she reminded me.  And then, I realized, she's right. God is in control, even in this.

 

satan seeks to destroy my sweet and innocent niece. But my God is much bigger. I can only see a finite view of things, in contrast to His view, infinite.  I can only see a speck of His purpose and plan in this world for my niece, and He can see the beginning to the end.  I must trust Him, but stay on my knees praying for her.