Category Archives: Children

How to stay close to and support your children. Issues with being involved as you’d like to be.

Division & Multiplication

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

Journeys

On a Wednesday morning last month I pull my hot cereal from the microwave and sit at the table. In front of me are the conference Ensign and the Book of Mormon my son had bound for me on his mission in Romania. Until the children come to visit these are always open on the table. I look at the two. “Which today, Father?” “The Ensign,” the Spirit says. I pull the Ensign near my bowl as the cereal cools and flip through it until I’m told to stop. “The Healing Ointment of Forgiveness.” It seems an innocent enough talk. But it puts me on a path of pondering, praying, and repenting for several weeks.

I made a personal covenant with the Lord a few years ago to read each conference Ensign before the next conference. As much as I enjoy conference, my experience with reading the talks, underlining, and scribbling in the margins, has sent me on many journeys.

About a year ago a conference talk prompted me on a journey to understand my two wayward children. “How could they leave the Church? How could they choose a direction so opposed to what I feel is true?” But I’m nervous and so I ask, “Do I want to go down this path? Will it shake my testimony?” No, it won’t. It’s not for everyone, but I am to walk this path a few miles.

At the end of those miles, a couple months later, after deep pondering, studying, and learning, I arrive. I’m in their shoes. I understand my dear children. I know with certainty how the teachings of the world make sense and comfort them. I feel how they can be good, even with their choices. I know how those in the spacious building think, and how right they feel.

2016-10-05-1831-01-license-plate-from-carls-missionOn my mission in Québec we baptized a young man. He gave me a license plate he had had made for me. I was without words. It was so personal and appreciated.

Over the years the words at the bottom of the plate have prodded me. “Je me souviens.” “I remember.” Since my journey with my children it now hangs on my wall. As I stood in my children’s shoes and looked at my testimony in one hand and what I’d learned about my children in the other, the Spirit said, “Remember!” And I remember. I DO remember‼ I remember in my teens in sacrament meeting asking, “Do I know this is all true?” The Spirit shouted, “You have always known. You just haven’t recognized it and you didn’t ask.” I remember in a bishopric meeting being told clearly to call Sister Davis as Primary president after just learning a week earlier that she hated Primary, then extending the call in her living room and her response, “I knew yesterday this call was coming before you even came. I accept.” I remember sitting on the front pew in Sacrament meeting six years ago, opening the scriptures at random when I was feeling the lowest in my life, and “happening” upon the words “your sins are forgiven you,” the only words that years earlier I had underlined on that page, just so in this moment I could read them—I broke into tears. I remember in the temple when I felt those beyond the veil, and when “chance” encounters repeated themselves so frequently I couldn’t doubt the Lord’s hand. I remember placing my hands on Nathan’s head to ordain him an elder, and the Spirit pouring words into my mouth.

“I will not, I cannot, desert to his foes; That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake, I’ll never, no never, I’ll never, no never, I’ll never, no never, no never forsake!”

My dear brothers. I commend the conference Ensign to you. It is the word of God. It will send you on your own journeys.

Brother Carl

Ant-Man

This weekend I saw the movie Ant-Man. Cute show. But from what I’ve learned over recent years about fathers, divorce, family law and the feminist movement, there were numerous things that bothered me. These are such a part of main-stream media that most people I suspect are oblivious to the subtle messages.

Scott Lang is the hero of the movie, at least in the end. He is the Ant-Man, who comes back from a life of crime.

  • Scott is a divorced man, portrayed as a dead-beat dad, unwilling to pay his alimony. Though this happens, this is not your standard divorced dad.
  • Scott is hindered from seeing his daughter until he can catch up on child support. A father’s relationship with his children should not be held hostage for any reason except if the child is in danger by the father. (Don’t get me off on this one. Family law in many ways is unconstitutional, topics for other posts.)
  • Scott is portrayed as a weakling, subservient to and controlled by his ex-wife. He is bumbling and clumsy (until of course later he becomes the hero). Even if done for effect and contrast, this perpetuates the common media bias that women are powerful and smart, and that men are stuck in their teen years.
  • Scott is again portrayed as a weakling compared to Dr. Pym’s daughter. He has to be taught by her how to fight!
  • The movie portrayed Scott’s daughter’s step dad as the one who really cared for and had a relationship with Scott’s daughter. She runs to her step dad and is protected by him—even when Scott is around. This portrays the father as not important once there has been divorce.
  • The movie could have been done without divorce being part of main story line. Just as strong a story could have been created with an intact family. I’d much prefer my children be taught the example of a good, solid, loving and caring family, even if mine is broken. Must we perpetuate the feeling that divorce is normal and accepted? Why not portray the ideal of an intact family to give children a hope and vision of what’s possible? Must we bring in the tension of a broken family? It’s like saying that swearing, infidelity, and sin are part of life, so let’s portray them (promote them) in film.
  • Why was Scott’s daughter always in her step-father’s arms, even when Scott was around? That’s odd. Where was the loving embraces of father and daughter?
  • Only in one scene, when Scott secretly entered his daughter’s bedroom when she was asleep, did I have a sense for the love of Scott for his daughter. The hunger for her was not portrayed well, nor the anger he should have displayed for not being able to see his daughter.

This was a cute and overall fun show to watch, even with some touching moments, but like typical modern media, portrayed life far from the ideal, perpetuating evil.

Your brother, Carl