This has been one of those parenting weeks when I realize I have no clue what I am supposed to be doing or how I am supposed to be reacting. Okay here is the back story and since it is my blog - it's a long story. All of my stories always are.
I am pretty sure we have a ghost in our house. Now before you start judging me as crazy-pants, let me explain why. I have seen him twice, in my room, scaring the hell out of me; and Natalia has seen him twice too. It is easy to think an adult is full of it, but Natalia holds a bit more weight since she is super cute and a horrible liar.
A little over a year ago Natalia was getting ready for kindergarten in her bathroom. Her bathroom lies between her room and another bedroom which we made into a playroom. Can you tell she is an only child? She has her own wing of the house. When I came into the bathroom from our kitchen to make sure she was actually brushing her teeth she looked at me funny and asked me if daddy had just walked by. Jeremy was sleeping in our bedroom on the other side of the house from her, and since I was in the kitchen in the middle of the house I knew he wasn't up yet. I told her 'no', then asked her 'why?'. She told me she saw a man walk from her bedroom into the playroom. I immediately got a chill. I told her it was probably Chance. Now, we have a pretty big and talented dog, but he doesn't walk on his hind legs like a circus animal. I was fetching for a good explanation. She adamantly told me it was a person - specifically a man. She also told me that sometimes she sees a person in her room who watches her when she sleeps. Creeeeeepy. I asked her if it bothers her and she told me she doesn't like it, but goes back to sleep. We had a deep, spiritual talk about how our bodies are like cars and our spirits are like the driver. When the car gets old or broken, the spirit leaves and then we don't really know for sure what happens next. She was cool with that, told me maybe it was my Grandpa Derr who she renamed Grandpa Dirt, and went to bed that night peacefully.
I have felt a couple of times since we have moved here that I am not always in the room by myself. Then I think I am just a flaky nut and need to cut back on my zombie/possession movie intake.
A month ago I decided to get off of Ambien which I had been on nightly for five years. Yes, this has a point in the story. I used melatonin to help me do this, but then realized it is a nightmare in a bottle and gave it to a friend. It gave me some crazy, vivid nightmares. I am a nightmare kind of girl though. Always have been and I really should write them down and sell them to Hollywood because there have been some pretty good ones. The point is that I know the difference between when I am in a nightmare and when I am awake. I just know. I am not caught in the Matrix, unable to differentiate my reality. That being said, I was totally willing to say I had a melatonin induced, Ambien-free nightmare when I woke up and saw the shadowy silhouette of a man standing at the foot of my bed. I screamed a bit and turned on the light. I NEVER move about in my nightmares. I may talk a lot when I am sleeping, but I am not a mover and a shaker. I had been awake.
This happened again about a week and half later, although this time I am certain I was totally awake, without a doubt. Jeremy was home that night and was in the office on the computer. He stays up late the night before he has his run of night shifts so he can jump into his four day nocturnal-ness. I woke up and saw a man standing next to his side of the bed and said "Hey sweet, what do you need?" thinking that Jeremy had come in to ask me a question. Usually these question have to do with where I hid the children's Motrin because Natalia gets a lot of leg cramps in the middle of the night. After I asked this, the man leaned closer towards me and I realized this was not Jeremy. There were no discernable features, but it was a man around six feet tall. The lean-in wasn't something menacing, but almost like he was surprised I was talking to him. Yep. Scared the crapola out of me so I bravely screamed and turned on the light. This was the same time that Jeremy was with Natalia because she had just had a nightmare. Poor Jeremy. He's trying to figure out how to console one girl, while his other girl let out a scream in the other room. I'm sure he thinks he lives in the House of Crazy, but is too loving and polite to say so.
I told him what I saw and his first response is "We don't have a ghost."
This week made me a believer. Natalia is an early riser, so our new family rule is: You can wake up early, but don't wake me up and you can't eat chips and fruit snacks for breakfast. She has always been afraid of being in any of the rooms by herself, so she has mastered the art of placing the pinch collar on the dog and corralling him wherever she needs him to be. She and Chance were in the bathroom that morning and she walked out to go into the office to play on the computer. As she was walking by the kitchen she saw a man "like daddy, but with hair wearing a brown robe" walk into the pantry and she said she could see through him. She then went into the office and layed down with the dog on his dog bed. I was wondering why she was sitting in front of my door (with the dog sporting his pinch collar) when I woke up. That just goes to show you that sleep deprived mommies are more scary than apparitions.
She told me what happened, I internally freaked out and fixed her some pancakes and finished our normal before school routine. That evening when we had a family discussion about it she said, and I quote "My imagination is really powerful, so it may have been that, but I saw him daddy. I could see him, but see through him." Like I said earlier, she's a horrible liar and is awfully analytical with her take on the situation. This big-girl response was a bit impressive to Jeremy and I.
I want to clarify that I am a spiritual kind of girl. As in biblically spiritual, not new age stuff. I am a believer in prayer, so after my creepy shadow guy and a long talk with my sister-in-law, I went through each room of the house, said a prayer and asked him to leave. I felt pretty good. Then Natalia upset my apple cart. Our mommy chair talk that night was a bit tough. She didn't want to talk about it because it scared her, then she said she thought maybe it was an angel without wings to protect us. Some of that talk was drawn from previous mommy chair discussions. I recently, in my own mind, surrendered my family to God. What that means to me is that I am going to try my darndest to give up my control freak nature and believe that someone bigger, smarter, and more powerful than my 5'3" frame has my family under control. This is testing that to the max.
I played with the idea of finding a medium to come in and maybe give me an answer of who this is, what he wants, and how to show him the exit. I ultimately decided against this path because I don't want a medium to give any other spirits the idea that this would be a cool place to hang out. I decided to go the prayer route. We have a neighbor who is ordained by his church come over and pray with us to bless our house. If I am really surrendering my family and giving up control - here is my test of faith. Nick is very nice and suggested the next time I see him I should try and ask him what he needs. I can't imagine I'll get past the screaming part.
While I do feel better after the blessing, I am still uneasy about the whole situation. My job as a mom is to practice my duck swim that I have mentioned many times before: calm on the surface even when I am paddling like hell underneath. My mom has seen ghosts before, this isn't my first rodeo with seeing one, and now Natalia sees them. I am starting to see a pattern. In my heart I know I am a reasonable and sane human being, although telling this makes me feel and sound a little crazy-pants. I refuse to give into any drama that might be absorbed by my little seven year old sponge. She has totally moved on to her next childhood drama (she is on Zachary's crush list - can you see my eyes rolling?) and doesn't seem undully scarred or scared. This blog is my way of purging the story and moving on to my next drama: Do we go with the older Disney cruise, or save money and go on a new and bigger ship without the Disney magic? Who am I kidding? I'm still freaked out.
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