A couple months ago, I forget how, I learned that my ex was going to take all of my children to Disneyland and the beach for a family reunion. A “my-last-name” family reunion. My first thought was, “How do you have a family reunion without the very living person who brought that ‘my-last-name name’ to the family? Wouldn’t it be a ‘my-ex’s-last-name’ family reunion?”

Anyway … that detail aside …

Over the past weeks I’ve taken my youngest to my married daughter’s house to work in the yard to earn spending money. I’ve overheard plans of my two out-of-state children flying directly to Southern California for the trip. I’ve sensed and heard the excitement of the children. I would be excited, too! Our family was last all together in Disneyland two years before the divorce.

My children and my ex were in Disneyland yesterday, on the beach today, and in Disneyland tomorrow. I’m home missing my weekday evening with the kids, missing them overnight this next weekend, and as fate would have it, my weeknight evening usually devoted from 6:00 pm until 11:00 for my church calling was canceled because the bishop decided to do a last-minute, deeply deserved, vacation with his family. (I adore that man. He is truly a saint, sacrificing much for the Lord.) For the first time in likely five years I have over a week with no time with my children, no responsibilities for my church calling, and this weekend is stake conference so I’ll have no hobnobbing with ward members in relation to my calling.

How do I feel?

I am sad, yes. And I’m constantly thinking of my children, day and night, all of them, and more than usual. I want to be with them. I miss them dearly. But unlike over past years, I’m not shedding as many tears. Not to say I’m not heartbroken. But I’m distanced. I don’t want to be around my ex–she took care of that by cleanly removing me from her life (and writing into our divorce decree that I can only contact her by email and text messages), and the time that has passed has allowed me to still feel sad, but not distraught, angry, and behind prison bars as I’ve discussed in the past.

I’ve wondered what a married person reading this might think. Can someone who has not experienced divorce imagine what it’s like to have your entire family, except you, go on a major vacation?

I had an insight as their vacation began. This week is a test. A trial. We have trials in our life, all carefully orchestrated, although many if not most will seem to be an unlucky throw of the dice. While my dearest possessions are away and enjoying themselves, can I remain faithful to my Father in Heaven? Will I keep sacred my covenants? Will I use my time wisely to read the scriptures, pray (for strength and peace!), and attend the temple? As I’ve done that in the past I’ve seen the blessings, the peace, the strength come in the following days and weeks. I look back over the time since my divorce, and my children have been blessed by a father who, as weak as he is, does his best to put the Lord first. I have a son who returned six months ago from a mission, a daughter leaving in eight days, and my two youngest ask if we can remember to have scripture study when we awake the next morning. (But not to say righteous children are a sign of a righteous parent; that is far from true–we can’t measure our success by our children. Many if not most good righteous LDS parents have children who have gone astray, two of mine included.)

Coming to my mind this week was also some wording from my patriarchal blessing: “You have a great mission to perform in this life, which will bring you back into the presence of the Lord. … You will become a faithful and loving father, for choice spirits from heaven will be given unto this union to train and educate in the ways of the Lord. … This will be your greatest mission in this life from which you will receive joy and happiness, which could be gained in no other way.”

The Light came to me this week that this does not necessarily mean that I am tasked with focusing on my children, but that I will be given strength outside myself to do so. Indeed, that has been the case. When my hope has run thin, when I am tired, weary, and unable, I have seen that the little efforts I put forth bring forth unexpected and glorious fruit, like volunteer tomatoes in the spring.

I pray that we all may remain true to our covenants, our God, and our Lord, in spite of the distractions, the temptations, the evils of the world, and the choices of others.

To my brothers in Israel,

Carl

It’s true. For those fathers of us who are divorced, sometimes it seems it would be easier to just not see our children any more. To cut all ties. To say goodbye for good. I know why some fathers do that, step out of their children’s lives forever. The continual goodbyes are painful.

Three weekends ago it was my children’s spring break, so my two school-age children and I took a train from Salt Lake City to Denver, leaving early Thursday morning (early meaning the train was to leave the station, yes, at 3:30 am), and returning the next Tuesday. (I’d not been on a train since I was their ages, 12 and 14 when Dad brought us on vacation to Utah from the Bay Area.) Our excuse for our trip to Denver was temple hopping. My youngest just turned 12 and got his temple recommend, so we decided to do baptisms at the Denver and the new Fort Collins temples. The details are for another post, but … we had a great time. A phenomenal time. I love being with them, even for a short while. It is the highlight of my life to be with them. We stayed at a bed and breakfast with wonderful family of five children (a miracle story of its own), rode rented bikes 25 miles on one day all through Denver, did some hiking, went to church, and shut out the world. It was just us three hiding together among several million strangers. Just us, together for six days. But then I had to say goodbye.

It was spring break for them. As it turned out, I got them during spring break this year, but my ex got them for Easter weekend. You know, to be fair. (Nothing’s fair for the father of divorce, believe me. All we’re doing is sharing our time with our ex, which means that the state ignores the time the mother has with the children each month, takes the father’s time, 72 hours of 720 hours in a month, and to be “fair,” when a father gets an extra weekend, such as spring break, to be “fair” they give the mother the next weekend, Easter, so the father doesn’t get more than his fair share of 72 hour a month.) So I say goodbye to them on Wednesday evening knowing that I would not have them again for 17 days. 17 days!! That’s half a month! I drove the 20 minutes “home” late that night after dropping them off, in grief. I could hardly bear the sorrow. Could God remove me from existence? And I don’t just mean this life. I didn’t want to exist in any form any more.

Yes, in those 17 days I get to see them for three hours one night a week where we throw together a dinner, do homework, laugh a lot (but in my heart I’m crying, knowing that three hours is slipping too fast), and I take them home to say goodbye again on their mother’s driveway, heartbroken again. Yes, I’ll see them tomorrow, Friday, at the start of “my” weekend. But as luck would have it, my older daughter just got her mission call today, and tomorrow she’s opening her call … at her mother’s house. So instead of me seeing the kids after school as I leave work early and go to my apartment, I won’t see them until 5:30. No big deal, right? It’s only a couple hours less.

But there’s something special, totally special, about coming home from work and stepping into my apartment with my two youngest children there. It’s a bit of heaven. Not something I can describe, but you single fathers know what I mean. It’s the one little view into what life used to be, coming home from work and having our children greet us. But instead of this happy greeting 20 work days a months, now it just happens four. So to remove one of those may not seem like a big deal to a “real” father. But to us it’s painful to lose one of the four a month, to fall into each others’ arms for just a few minutes, forgetting that in three hours there will be another goodbye.

Carl