Scott, a good friend, shared a video with me this evening of a preacher and marriage therapist, Mark Gungor. Mark is close on his assessment of how I felt in the last years of our marriage. I suspect my then-wife would feel the same.
Besides, we need a little levity on this overly serious blog anyway.
Enjoy: A Tale of Two Brains
To your strength,
Carl
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
A number of months ago I was reminiscing about the time since I’d been divorced. “Reminisce” is the wrong word. That makes it sound like I was dreaming about the good ol’ days. “Day dreaming?” Ha! I don’t think so. “Having a nightmare?” No. ☺ But I was wondering what I’d learned and where I was compared to where I began at the time of separation from my wife.
I wonder if this will be hard to hear or believe: I confessed to myself that I’d actually progressed. I’m not saying separation and divorce was good, nor right, nor that I thought it should have happened and that my wife was right in seeking divorce. But just like the stone in the riverbed, rolling and rubbing against other stones and sand over dozens of years, it becomes smooth and beautiful. I know that if I will let them, hard times make me a better man. (I don’t want women who might be reading this to think divorce is OK because it makes men better, especially considering the negative effects on innocent children caught in the middle!) But aside from the evils of divorce in most cases, or whatever the hardship, these times can make us better men … if we will let them.
Something during that time of “reminiscing” over a week-or-so period led me to consider and ponder Abraham. The comparison is not perfect, because Abraham’s test was given to him by the Lord, carefully crafted to see if he would remain faithful to the word of God that came to him, to sacrifice his son. But it’s terribly close. And regardless of the source of the test, from God or brought upon us by the choice of others, how we respond to the test proves our mettle.
Personally I was far from perfect during that time. And I still am. I am a failure. And I failed continually. I have at many times been angry, lost, inconsolable, and a dozen other unmentionable adjectives, each of which my Father in Heaven was not pleased with. But I tried. As Maria in The Sound of Music said, “Perhaps I had a wicked childhood, perhaps I had a miserable youth, but somewhere in my wicked, miserable past, …I must have done something good.” Something in my past, in my upbringing by “goodly parents,” told me that I would be happier in the long run if I remained faithful to the truths of the gospel that I’d been taught.
I cannot describe the difficulties and awkwardness of that time. I had made a commitment to my Father in Heaven to remain active in the church, regardless of the embarrassment or what I thought others might think. Ours is a family religion, and although it’s quite acceptable to be a single woman, that’s from from so for single men. This time was I dare say the hardest thing I’ve done in my life. Being a somewhat quiet person anyway, I decided to go to every function that I’d have gone to as a married man: Sunday church, all my meetings, church parties, wedding receptions (that’s one of the toughest!!), church cleaning, welfare assignments, home teaching, whatever came up. I got numerous awkward interactions and odd looks, blank stares, and conversations that were worse than a first blind date. But I kept in the back of my head that I was doing all of this solely for me and my relationship with my Father in Heaven. (All of those that had awkwardness being around me had their own issues to deal with, and as long as I was cordial and saintly, well, at least as best I could be, perhaps I’d be a catalyst to help them learn to overcome their issues with single men, to help them repent so to speak, although that’s only a thought I have now in hindsight, not something I could consider then.)
And beyond the awkwardness, the pain of being removed from my children, well, you all know what that’s like. Words can’t describe being separated from those you love and for whom God planted in your heart a natural instinct and desire to protect and provide for. My wife and I lost a child at birth, and the two years following until our next child was born were some of the darkest and hardest. But to be teased and taunted week after week with short visits and then long separations from my children, I’ve thought more than once that either I’d rather give up and not see my children anymore, or kidnap them. But I knew in my heart that neither would be good for the children, just a selfish desire on my part.
OK, so back to Abraham. I believe that for those of us in this life that profess to love God, we will have an Abrahamic experience. And the difficulty of that experience will be commensurate to our faith and trust in God. The more trust and faith in God we have, the more difficult the experience we will be presented. And, we will have repeated experiences, some small, some larger, to test our commitment along our mortal path. Sometimes I wish I were a swearin’ man. Must life be this difficult! Yes, it’s part of the “test” of this life, a probationary period. Ha! Now there’s a nice analogy. I’ve often compared divorce to prison in regards to our separation from our children and wife. Are we all on probation in this life? That might be fun to try writing about sometime.
I find the similarity with Abraham’s and our experiences surprisingly similar in many respects. Both have to do with what we care for most, our families. And similarly, Abraham and we have sons removed from us, although not permanently. Ours is a painful week-after-week manner as we see them once or twice a week (whereas we used to seem them every night and tuck them into bed). Hmmm. At least Abraham got his son back. When do I get my sons (and daughters) back?
My heart goes out to Abraham. My heart goes out to you, my brothers.
Carl