Mediator

April 16, 1995

The Easter talks and conference talks about atonement of Christ as the great Mediator, combining Justice and Mercy by taking over the debt himself were wonderful to hear.

The hint I got from Mother, as I wrote you about, that you feel I owe you a debt for perceived wrong doings, and I realize that I still feel that you owe my children the money that would have been theirs for college and starting life, the hundreds of thousands of dollars given us over the years by my parents that I trusted you to invest for the purpose of taking care of our children and educating them.

Perhaps the children are the only ones that are really owed a debt and our paying the money to lawyers has not helped them in any way. They have neither gotten what they asked for and wanted, nor been given the money they need and want for college.

Maybe it should be up to the children to be the mediators in that the debt is really falling in their laps as they begin college, broke with no college funds to help them. They seem to be surviving and dealing with their lives, and they will probably make it on their own.

But as Mediator they would accept the debt for each of us if we became obliged to them as our creditors--according to Hinkley's parable of the great mediator. If there was a trust fund that provided college money for them as they progressed through college we could pay into that rather than sending our lawyers' kids to college. So far they are the only winners in these 8 years.

You nor I will ever make together any amount near the money my parents gave us over the years, and I will probably not be able to work enough years to pay you what you think I owe you,(my job ends May 25, I have no prospects, and you are familiar with my track record) but if Christ was measuring it, the effort to support our children would probably count more than the effort to continue to destroy my credibility in courts, and any meager effort I would make to defend myself from the demands you have made on me in spite of our legal agreement in l987 not to do so.

Maybe forgiving debts would make a good statement from both of us that we do believe in Christ and do make some efforts to follow his words. It might help them forgive us the debt we owe them.

Even the $200,000 dollars that we got from the sale of the ranch, if it had been put in simple CD or other safe investments would have made enough interest to help them all through college.
That was my mistake, I gave in to your insisting that we invest it all in the pig farm, and your promises that there would be sufficient return to take care of them.


Granted the money you chose to spend to present your case (what did you tell Mother, twenty thousand dollars?) in court to get me to pay child support could have also been spent more wisely by investing. I have never understood why you would throw away good money on a lawyer when you were a capable one yourself. It was almost as if you planned to spend as much as you could possibly spend on an attorney and then put the attorney's fees off on me. But we agreed to pay our own in l987. In l991 the judge again ruled that we would each pay our own. Why throw more good money after badly spent money?


I looked up mediators in the yellow pages and called a couple--they are mostly lawyers with counseling training or counselors with legal training who charge gobs of money to listen to people argue out of court. Since we have gone the route of counseling and church mediators etc, I didn't think it would do much good to suggest it. The fact that there is no communication between us makes in nearly impossible for a mediator to make any difference.

My suggestion is we set up a scholarship fund that the children can draw on according to their progress in school, or whatever rules you want to make for it, we match funds each month in donations to the fund, in an attempt to pay our debt to the children, and forgive the indebtedness to each other satisfying both justice and mercy. By taking on the mediator role, the children can possibly overcome the problems they have expressed of forgiving and being forgiven and the past can be put behind us all.

I don't expect to hear from you, since you usually don't answer letters, but if you are willing to attempt this arrangement you know my address. As you are aware, I have dismissed my attorney and everything is on hold legally at this time as far as I know, but there are time constraints on the appeal procedure and I will be forced to proceed with it if we cannot work out something of this nature. We, meaning you and me and the children, excluding your attorney.