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"Draw your chair up to the edge of the precipice, and I will tell you a story." F. Scott Fitzgerald

I feel like I'm on the edge of that precipice.

I'm an open person, and I write/talk about things to cope with stress in life. But this is beyond me right now. I haven't really talked yet, only to a few. So I'll give writing it down a try.

Two weeks ago, a detective came to our house to talk to me. I knew him, he's been here a few times while we organized neighborhood watch meetings and dealt with theifs breaking into our storage buildings around the neighborhood. I thought he was here about that again. I wish that's why he had come.

He told me that our teenage neighbor had confessed to molesting our daughter. He had also been found to have molested their close family friend's young daughter as well, and she had told her sunday school teacher about it. So it became known, those two families tried to work it out and decided going forward with Social Services was the best for the little girl. So the neighbors had voluntarily taken their son to talk to a detective, where he also admitted doing things to Maren.

Except the things he confessed to, were very minimal in comparison to what she opened up about when James and I talked with her about it. At first, she wasn't connecting what we were asking about "good touch/bad touch" to this person, she commented about accidental touches to her hiney while playing with friends, innocent stuff. We kept prodding and she said "no." So we bluntly asked "What about ***'s older brother?" Then the flood gates opened. And it was a nighmare. I was so proud of the things that she told us she said, and how she tried to handle it on her own, she's such a brave, smart girl. And I was so outraged by the fear and luring that this person orchestrated for about a year (that we've roughly calculated based on details Maren remembers.) It wasn't as curious and forgivable even as he had first portrayed.

And more details have continued to spill from her, now that she feels empowered and raw about all of this. She never told us directly because she was afraid that she would get in trouble because she had agreed to things to make the instance stop at that time. But she would come inside some days and say "*** is picking on me." And when I would ask about that, she never wanted to say more, she was just upset and mad, and I would redirect her to do something else then instead of playing outside. I never thought what she meant was anything about this nature. I never thought to dig deeper. I feel so awful.

Just for our own peace of mind, we asked Kellan as well, and he firmly said "no." We asked specifically yet nonchalantly , and he still said no. But he's usually a wide open kid, and after he said "no, nothing ever happened" he just calmed and didn't continue more in conversation with us. But something gnawed at James, and he found some time to talk more with Kellan over the weekend. He opened up about a vile and horrible act that this teenager did to him, while I was outside the kitchen door right outside, talking with the other mother. He had asked Kellan if he could do these things on him and out of fear Kellan said "Yes." So he too, thought he would be in trouble for saying yes.

I lost it. I was raging. I praised him for being brave to tell us, and assured him that he was not wrong or in trouble at all, then left him with his daddy while I stormed out the door to talk to the teenager myself. I wasn't in my right head. I had every motive to just start throwing my fists all over him. But he wasn't home. He was with his mother, mowing a lawn at a neighbor's house, and James took off before I could, to confront him.

Throughout all of this, James's ability to conrol his rage I think has only come from our deepest heartache also for this family. The parents really are some of the greatest people that I know, and the involvement they have with their children's lives is unheard of in this day. They have been very communicative and open about everything as we try to sort through this together. So when James approached the mother with the broken look on his face, she was scared for what was coming next. They were heartbroken and shattered over what he had confessed to originally, and what came out from our children has put their family through the most painful trial of their lives. And it kept getting worse, she knew why James was there. He assured her that he wasn't going to hurt him, he just wanted to hear it from him personally, and she agreed. To this point, we've talked only with the parent's as they've kept him basically on their own version of house arrest.

James approached him and demanded that he look at him in the eyes, which he did respectfully. He asked him "Tell me about Kellan." To which, he confirmed everything that Kellan had said to us, in front of his mother. He wasn't defiant. He was respectful in his language and eye contact. But somewhere in this boy's life, something broke inside him, and his parents never knew or saw this coming. He is accepting of his punishment that he knows will be coming from charges once the state makes them. And he is trying to be pentative and remorseful. But the nature of the way he preyed on my children, under my nose, despite the precautions I always took, still overrides any inkling of forgiveness we would be capable of right now. We are raging. It is a nightmare.

On top of the sickness that this new pregnancy has brought me, I find my stomach lurching and my nerves unsettled even more every time that I think about these things. Or when my children have expressed certain feelings with me about the uncomfortableness this as caused them to play outside like they used to. "Trying not to stress" is not such an easy thing, and it is taking it's toll on me. My body is threatening a miscarraige, and I'm waiting for strength to come from higher powers because it's not within me any more.

This baby was planned, but sudden, due to a health factor that James is dealing with. He has a testicular tumor, which only protocol is to remove the testicle, maybe both depending on the attatchment for the blood supply to it. So we decided to finalize our family instead of costly fertility preservations that may not work for us, since we have had our struggles to conceive as it is. This month he should have been scheduling his biopsy, scans, and surgery. But instead is putting it on the back burner because our heads just cannot wrap around one more thing right now.

I know that through all of this, the Lord has a plan to help us through it, and this too can be used for God's good. I just can't see it right now. I had a hard enough time pulling myself off of the couch on a normal day of this pregnancy. I am grateful beyond words to the support my dear friend Tiffany has been, just doing sweet things to let us know that we are loved. I'm trying to figure out what pulling myself up by the bootstraps really means, and laying it all before the Lord to take care of. I'm bad about asking for help. But I sure do need some, even if it's just prayers.