Although I’d sensed it before, I noticed sufficiently this weekend that I understood.

I occasionally find my wonderful daughter doing something, like writing a letter or drawing a picture that she doesn’t want me to see. I can tell she’s doing it in a way so as to not let me know that she’s hiding something from me, but parents have eyes that see without the use of our eyes. We sense things, we know things, and perhaps it’s the Spirit or a parental sense.

My daughter this weekend was doing something in her notebook on Saturday when she and my son were here, and I could tell it was a secret. It took several hours. She worked on it casually while we watched a movie or did something else. I didn’t feel to press her on it or mention it. I wondered if it was a surprise of sorts.

I’ve noticed this same behavior in months past, but this time I chose to listen to my heart to know what was going on. And it dawned on me that she was writing or drawing something for her mother. I see the same thing when they want to speak with their mother. They don’t want me to hear what their saying, likely including “I love you.” So they take my phone or my daughter’s into another room and close the door while they chat.

I am not hurt, nor threatened when I realized this, but saddened. Here my wonderful daughter, with whom I have our own even sacred and special relationship, feels uneasy about letting me know the she loves her mother, too.

On the way to school this morning (I am allowed to keep the children until Monday morning when I drop them off at school), I got a text while driving, and picking up my phone I saw it was a text from my daughter, sitting behind me in the car. I sensed a little horror on her part as she realized what she’d done. “Oh! I meant that for Mom. But I love you, too!”

I suddenly got a little view into my daughter’s heart. Though she may not recognize it fully, she loves both of her parents, and yet doesn’t feel comfortable letting either know that she loves the other. Her love for each is cleanly divided between the two parents. Compartmentalized. She does her best to keep the love for each separate.

A few minutes ago as I pondered this, hours later having just gone to bed, I felt sad for her. A child should never have to split, separate, and divide her love between her parents. So I got up and am writing this now. I thought about an intact family, and am reminded how my innocent son, when his mother and father were near each other in a rare meeting face to face when handing off the kids or at some child event, ran to my ex and me and wrap his arms around both of us, pulling us, almost throwing us together, innocently showing love to both and unknowingly wishing for a “whole” family. That is God’s way. God wants intact families, and children know that. But our family has been broken. Instead of the love of parents and children multiplying, growing, and expanding together and between each other, parent to parent, parents to children, children to parents, it is divided, kept “clean” and separate. There is an uneasiness, almost a fear of the child not wanting the love to be obvious to others.

I cry inside that my younger children will never know the growing, expanding, all-encompassing, multiplying love of an intact family.

May the peace of our Father be with you,

Carl