JB Smiths Blog – Author @ books4free.com

I met my wife during Covid, in 2020, in an AA meeting. I met her daughter Avery a couple of years later, when she was about two years old. The little girl is psychic — and I don’t mean it metaphorically. She once guessed my friend Ted’s age to the number (he’s 61), and she’ll often act out big ideas and themes through little puppet plays, not knowing she’s literally relaying a scene that’s happening in real life

Audrey and I married in 2023, and we began the process of adopting Avery. Her biological father was in active addiction — abusive, and stealing from Audrey even while she carried the baby. He was high at the hospital, stealing from her wallet on the way to the ultrasound. An absolute parasite of a human — or rather, a sick, unhealed addict. He simply wasn’t husband or father material. After a drug overdose in 2022, he claimed he was “sober.” When we demanded drug tests, it turned out his sobriety was synthetic — a medicated one. He’d traded heroin for Kratom. Audrey knew he wasn’t really sober. I wasn’t sure at first, but she, too, seems to know things.

The ex-mother-in-law was poisonous as well. Audrey had a few simple requests for her to stay in contact with Avery — nothing challenging or obtuse: don’t let her see the bio dad, who was a drug abuser and mentally unwell, and don’t take Avery anywhere she isn’t supposed to be. The woman defied Audrey — Avery’s mother — multiple times, and so she was forbidden to be around the child without Audrey present, and only with supervision. There were other suspicious incidents that gave Audrey pause. She pointed them out at the time, but I didn’t register them until later.

God works in mysterious ways; His miracles never cease. He was with us at every step of this journey, which spanned three years. The court case was long, expensive, boring, and thrilling all at once. But one thing I can’t fail to mention is how we learned about the mother-in-law’s employment history, mid-trial. This was the direct hand of God, nothing less.

My wife had a good job at a top rehab in Saint Pete, and she resigned because she planned to enroll at Pacifica for her PhD. Sadly, weeks before starting, she learned that a petty credentials issue between California and Florida made it unfeasible — and so she was out of work.

Now keep in mind: throughout the trial, they tried to paint my wife as unreasonable, mean, and unwieldy for asking that a few requirements be met before the bio dad could be in Avery’s life. And we’re not talking about big asks. Sobriety, first and foremost, for an active heroin user with multiple overdoses and a felony record — and did I mention he has six other children he’s been legally separated from? The mother-in-law was one of the first on the stand, pointing the finger at Audrey, painting her as a villain and herself as a saint — noting that she was a caretaker for the elderly and for children at different organizations. It went on and on.

The trial dates stretched through 2025. Around trial date #5, Audrey began applying for new jobs in town, and she landed a role as executive assistant to the CEO of what I can best describe as a non-profit orphanage. The Lord seems to work through synchronicities, and these are pretty wild: Audrey was hired out of 400 applicants, not even fully aware of the scope of the role — and her first interview happened to land on our two-year anniversary, December 4th.

Two weeks into the job, Audrey searched the system for the word “report” — and the mother-in-law’s termination report from this very orphanage popped up. She had been fired for being verbally abusive with the children. And — cherry on top — she’d used the bio dad in those threats: showing poor, defenseless children in state custody, separated from their families, a picture of this tattoo-faced junkie in his thirties, and threatening that if they messed with her, she would send her deranged son to, quote, beat them up. We could not have orchestrated this for court any better if we’d written it ourselves.

Of all the jobs, in all of Pinellas County, God placed Audrey in the one position where she would discover that this woman — who had initially allied with Audrey, but slowly began showing subtle red flags — was actually abusive and cruel toward children. Audrey asked her boss if we could use it in court, and she said yes. Digging deeper, we learned the woman had been fired on December 4th. Our anniversary.

Audrey had documented everything amazingly well, and in the many he-said/she-said moments, we could verify he was lying with texts and Facebook messages — part of the reason it all took so long. But the chef’s kiss, truly, was that this egomaniac mother-in-law — who initiated the entire custody battle because she didn’t want to follow Audrey’s rules — discredited herself with her own firing, from the very place Audrey would end up working. God is good, all the time.

It put other suspicious events into a new light as well: Avery coming home from sleepovers with this woman physically and emotionally drained, one time collapsing in front of daycare after a night with her. Audrey’s intuition was proven 100% accurate. They’re both little psychics, really.

God put fatherhood on my heart a long time ago with little baby Drewbird, and I love being a dad. I’m just so grateful I get to do it again — and that this battle, really a battle between good and evil, has been won.

We had to surrender to win. It took a lot longer and cost a lot more, but good won in the end, and I’m super grateful. God is good, all the time. Thank you, Jesus.