Wow, didn't see that coming!

What to say about my past couple weeks? Wow. Who would have even thought I would be posting a blog related to this subject at 27 years old....but I may end up being a child of a broken home. After 49.75 years of marriage, my parents may end up ending things. My mom has moved out and is staying with a family friend short term while she finds an apartment. My dad is at home broken and bleeding his heart dry. Mom left once already this year back in March, but came home after about 5 days. This time its different though. This time there's another factor.

See my mom had pretty much already decided she was leaving and was going to end it. None of us 3 kids were really surprised by this. What surprised me was my dad asking me to check her phone records, because he was getting suspicious of her cell usage. (texting mostly) I did as my dad asked (glad he had requested it because we all were thinking the same thing) and we did uncover an unusually high number of minutes and texts being used on a single number. My sister and I's original thought was that it was her best friend who recently also left her husband of almost equally as long. Upon further investigation we found this number was also on my dads cell usage too, so we almost ruled it out as suspicious.....ALMOST. Until we figured out why it was on both their call logs. This was a friend of the family. This was my dad's closest living friend (he's lost 2 very close friends in the last few years) and this was the husband (soon to be ex husband) of that very same best friend who had left her husband not so long ago! Wow did that throw us for a loop. How do you even begin to deal with this?

Being believers in following things up in a biblical way, we decided not to tell my dad until we had sought wise counsel from some people. We went to mom and dad's pastor (also a long time family friend, tho also the brother of this man who mom was talking to) and told him what we found on the cell records. My sister gave him all the info of the amount of usage before disclosing who was being called. Once we had his honest opinion of the situation, we gave him the news that it was his brother. He was shocked and immediately agreed to confront him about it.

Not knowing where the loyalties would fall once confronted (with my mother or with his brother) and being unable to predict what was going to follow the confrontation, we decided to tell my dad what we had found before he could be ambushed by it the following day.

The next day the pastor/brother called us and said according to this man, they were just friends who talked and he hadn't realized how much time they were spending on the phone until it was laid out for him. He agreed to cease this behavior, also agreeing that it was inappropriate in the least.

My dad once informed on this, decided to keep a watchful eye on the phone records to see that the cease of calls was honored. It wasn't.

During all this, I have had multiple ugly fights and run ins with my mother, two not pleasant chats on FB with the other man and countless broken hearted conversations with my dad. I have called my mom out, tried to get her to see her wrong, and begged her to stop this. (I say stop this only meaning the emotional connection to this friend of my dads. nothing ever went beyond long talks on the phone)

As it stands right now, there is still contact with this man, mom is still looking for an apartment, and dad is a total emotional wreck. On top of this there is the up and down of their relationship and the one day fighting, next day discussing reconciliation. Needless to say the whole family is stressed, hurt, and angry. My sister and I are the most involved in all this, and myself even more so than her. For some reason my dad feels able to talk and open up to me about his feelings, cry on my shoulder, and cuss his anger out in my ear. While I am so grateful for this trust, and that he isn't holding in his feelings about this, its soooooo hard to put it all away and live my life right now. I feel like I haven't been able to be the wife, mother, friend, or aunt I usually am just because I am spending so much time on the phone with my family, or if I'm not on the phone I am just so emotionally exhausted and mentally wiped that I don't want to do anything. My house is a mess, my bills are getting overlooked (I'm taking care of that tomorrow) and my kids have had no summer fun in over a week.

How do you be there for those who were always there for you, bailed you out of your own stupidity, given you what they couldn't afford to give and stood by while you made mistakes knowing they were going to be the ones helping pick up the mess you made? How do you not loose yourself in this whole situation. How do you maintain a balance of priorities when you can't even balance your emotions? How do you keep a happy face with your children and a patient tongue with them, when you just want to crawl in bed and sleep off the mess of stress and exhaustion that has become your daily routine?