Hearing from The Nephew

Sunday morning, 8am, the telephone rang. A familiar voice on the other end - "Hello? Auntie?"

Yep, it was the Soldier Boy himself.

We have been getting letters but this was our first telephone call. I have been writing him a letter a week, and have sent letters and cards to four of his mates, but this was our first telephone call.

And I am so grateful.

The boy turns 21 years old in a week or so and it is going to be the first birthday not celebrated at home, with at least two members of his weird and fractured family. I cannot help but feel sorry that the last six years of his life were so unstable, but I'm grateful that today he sounds fulfilled and grown up and, most of all, HAPPY with the life he has chosen.

For all of you who have written to him and his comrades, thank you. He told me he's received the cards and letters and that he felt like people really MEANT it when they wished him well.

"You have great friends, Auntie. Tell them I don't get a lot of time for writing here, but I sure am appreciative".

Yup, he is even using grown up sounding words now...it is amazing the changes that are coming over him and I am so grateful.

I will not be posting much over at The Hive for awhile. LOM is stalking me online - revealing my full name and my involvement with a 12 step program...and claiming that I have been banned from speaking and that I am a sex addict and addicted to narcotics and...oh it just goes on and on and on and on....this is too stressful and frightening for me. I trust God, of course, but I also know that he is seriously ill and unpredictable.

So I have let certain people know what is going on. If anything happens to me or my mother, it is LOM's door that will be knocked upon. That's all I can do - the rest is in the Hands of a Loving and Merciful God.

And that cannot be bad.