When a Father Faces Justice

My biological father has been arrested and extradited to my home town. He abandoned me by the age of 6 months old and never sent a single cent in my name. By the time the authorities pulled him over (while driving drunk, without a lincense, and with weed on his person), he owed $32,000 in my name alone. That is 18 uninterupted years of neglect and evading the authorities. At the time, my sister and I had already made arrangements to take in our 15 year old sister from our father because he was trying to save up enough money to go turn himself in to the authorities for this exact thing. He was living in a tent in his stepdaughter's back yard and letting his three kids just sort of stay where someone would take them in. It was bad enough for Brittney and I to step in and be the big sisters we know all-to-well how to be and get at least one of the children in a stable environment. We still have a sister over there, but she seems to be happy with her mother in a way that the one we took in can't be.
Up until this whole ordeal I was never given the truth about basically any part of their lives with my father. But I was the one to fly my sister in and drive her the 6 hours to Brittney's house so I got to hear everything. It was a hard experience for me and it unleashed some of the nastiest skeletons that existed in my own closet. It was a Pandora's Box sitting and talking with this sister just hearing about her life and the things she experienced and witnessed on a normal basis. It was just a very difficult thing to have to face.
Tomorrow is his arraignment. Tomorrow my aunt and grandmother are going to sit in the same room as him and watch him make his plea. It will be intense because my uncle who is my father's brother will also be there and it will be high tensions going around from all angles. It is not at all the kind of family reunion that anyone wishes for. The only redeeming factor involved for me is that I won't have to be there and I know my mother won't be there either. I don't want her to have to see him if she isn't ready. There are a lot of things that passed between them to have gotten married, had a baby, and divorced. I just want her protected in all this mess too because he is just not right in the head or the person she knew 25 years ago. How do you make sense of all this? I guess no one has an answer to that one...

E Update

We finally took E in to the gastro specialist yesterday and it was such a deep relief for me. Not because we got great news or were told she is fine, but because the opposite happened. I have been worrying myself to death since she was born because I could see something wasn't right with her health. She started getting smaller and smaller and not gaining the weight we knew she should and when we tried to feed her baby food, she got even worse. Her reflux is back and she can't eat baby food without it coming back up or making her sick the whole rest of the night. So yesterday I was finally able to sit down with a specialist and get her looked at and her history sorted through with her doctor. The first thing he said is that she is a failure to thrive baby and is significantly small for her age and that something is wrong. After discussing everything I told him, he has decided that there is something more than just a baby who needs to eat more going on and he will be admitting her into UCLA for three, maybe more, days to run tests. He had a lot of blood drawn to start searching through that way also. Within the next two weeks, we will be finally going toward the bottom of this. I mean, just yesterday when they weighed her, she only weighed in at 13 lbs. 2.5 oz. and she is 8 months old. I am so looking forward to getting answers or a diagnoses that will help us in getting her healthy. I have also noticed that she physically can't sit up. The only way she sits up is in your lap because she seems to have weakness in her back that even the doctor didn't like seeing. He is going to have a neurologist check her out during our hospital stay to see. I am admittedly scared but I know that whatever they find, the Lord already addressed it's existence and blessed her to heal from it. This will all work out because God is involved and I have faith in that completely. He will watch over her and guide her doctors. Please send your prayers E's way.

Comparison Time!

Okay, these pictures are of when I started my weight loss journey and now. I have lost 20 POUNDS! Of course, my next blog will make that quite ironic. Stay tuned......