Tore Us Apart

A few years ago, my oldest daughter was preparing to take her First Communion. The church required that parents and godparents attend a two day retreat.

It was during this retreat that my children's father reconnected with God. He was touched by everything he lived that day. I remember seeing him literally brought down to his knees in tears. After the retreat, he started going to Mass every Sunday with my Mom and children. He bought a Bible and signed up for bible study. He even asked me to marry him, he wanted a big Catholic wedding, suddenly he wanted everything blessed by God.

It was right at that time that we started noticing some really scary things happening. Doors would slam on their own, we would feel watched and no matter what we did our house was always freezing cold, day and night. At night, we would hear someone whispering in our bedroom but never found where it was coming from. Our children started having nightmares and their attitude started changing, they weren't as happy anymore. I don't know if it was sleep deprivation, but it's like we were angry and tired all the time. My ex had trouble sleeping, he would complain that something kept waking him up. A couple of times I woke at night to see him peeking out the bedroom window. He said that "he is here to take the children", when I would ask him "who?", he would shush me and would whisper that he was going to hear us. The next day he would wake up like nothing happened and when I would ask him he would laugh and say it was nothing, that he must have been sleep walking.

We were told by a member of our church congregation to set our Bible on our night stand and have it open on a psalm (don't remember which one). We started praying every night before bed. It worked for a little bit. We had a group of people come to our house and help us bless it, then we sat around and prayed and sang hymns and church songs. It was a very peaceful, spiritual night, for the first time in months, we felt safe and thought everything was going to be alright. That is until everyone left and we walked upstairs to our bedroom.

We found the Bible on the floor, it appeared it had been thrown across the room. This scared me so much I refused to go in the bedroom and slept with my children in one bedroom. We had the priest come and bless the house the next day. That seemed to work for a while.

Then we had our big Catholic wedding. As soon as we started with the planning and preparation, the fighting started and didn't stop, we actually fought on our way to church and during all of our 'honeymoon'. It was as if we suddenly hated each other. We went to couples counseling; we got help from the priest of our church and a few church members. Nothing seemed to help.

I remember now that I would look at him and feel absolute hate. It started affecting our children to the point that they got counseling too. It was one of the worst times of our lives. There wasn't one night that one of the children didn't get up and go to our bedroom because they were scared, and would complain that knocking wouldn't let them sleep. We knew they were not making it up, we had heard the knocking too. My oldest slept holding her rosary beads one night, she was so scared, she fell asleep praying. The next morning, she came and asked me if I had taken her rosary beads because they were gone. We looked for them everywhere but we never found them. We tried just about everything to cleanse our home and get our family back but nothing seemed to work. We pretended we were a happy family for appearances, we literally would go to Mass every Sunday and wouldn't even look at each other during the service.

We tried to stay together for as long as we could. We had never talked about separating, we both thought that what God brought together, no one would be able to tear apart. Then one day, without the yelling, without the crying, without the hate, we decided that we had had enough. So, after living together for 12 happy years and 3 miserable ones, he packed his things and left. That night, I slept better than I had in 3 years. After that day, my house felt lighter, was happier and guess what? Me and my 3 children slept through the night, no noise, no knocking, no blankets being pulled. The funny thing is that he says the same thing. He feels more at peace now, he's much happier and he doesn't feel angry any more.

I still have the occasional unexplained occurrence, for as long as I can remember I have seen spirits. But, nothing like what I felt, heard and saw during this time in my life, that was different. I will always wonder what this was. It's as if something did not want us getting close to God. My children have all been baptized, they have had their first communions and confirmations, it's what's expected coming from a very devout Catholic family. I believe in God but I have to say that I am not a religious person. I never go to church or mass anymore, and now that my children are older I have let them choose if they want to go or not.

Does anyone have any thoughts or theories of why this was happening to my family at precisely this time?