For over a decade, my most widespread fear, the one thought staying with me, like a vampire clinging to the soul, was how my divorce would affect the relationship with my children. How would they regard a father diluted but whose love was still pure; a dad whose time and attention were court ordered? Someone who often resembled the fun uncle instead of a parent. Would I ever eclipse their sun the way my father did mine? Or, would I fade into an afterthought; a few lines in the larger story of their lives?
This anxiety has been the motivation behind many of the steps I’ve tread along this fatherhood journey. A determination birthed in doubt and worry. I have often handcrafted traditions just to serve as mile markers in their childhood memory. The tangible evidence they did have a daddy, and he was there.
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This is what stuck in my mind reading through a recent email from a soon to be divorced father. He writes,
“My kids (2 1/2 and 15 months) are both boys. I am having trouble coping with 1) not seeing them every day and 2) afraid of another man filling my role as their dad. My boys are my left and right arms. I love them dearly and a very hands-on father. Afraid at this age, they will not even remember me raising them daily. I will always be in my boy’s life but like you stated, relegated to the uncle status because they will be living with their mother. And if my soon-to-be-ex finds someone else before they turn 5 (5 because I believe that's when they can truly remember) all they will know is this other man raising them on a daily basis while I will see them on occasions."
"I would like to know from your experience, did your kids truly feel you still as their father Even though there was another man raising them daily? Is there a real bond that still exist between children and their biological father?”
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In a culture that has nearly turned divorce into a holiday worth celebrating, the new ‘coming out’ of sorts, complete with its own line of inspirational quotes, this father’s horror reminds us of the cold reality of divorce. I know and appreciate what he’s going through. I too have peered into that infernal abyss and felt the dead blackness staring back chilling me to the bone. I’ve tasted the dread of being forgotten, neglected, or discarded. I’ve battled long those demons of regret and panic as they attacked from every side, set on erasing all my hopes.
However, while, like this father, I have looked only to see darkness and misery, I also know the light can never extinguish. Though his path may seem ominous and even hopeless at the moment, the journey does not have to end in despair. Divorce brings all fathers to a crossroad. One direction circles back on itself to where we started, always keeping us in the past. The other moves us into the future and where we want to go. Head one way and we never get beyond what’s been lost and taken away. Go the other and we step towards what has been given and can be. One direction is madness; the other is hope.
It is proper and even necessary to mourn when something dies. Divorce is surely death. It’s the death of promises and dreams. We are right to look back and grieve what can no longer be. To cry for that which has been laid to rest. However, we cannot stay there. To do so would be to die ourselves. As with all who are lost forever, those who remain behind must continue living. Every person I’ve met, who has gone through the hell of separation and divorce and come out the other side a new and better person, is appreciative of that journey, even to the point of considering it a blessing. How can this be? Because once they mourned a while, they stepped towards the future and the hope that lies ahead.
That is what I want this father most to understand.
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Our children can never forget, but it’s up to us, as fathers, to determine what memories they have. Will they remember a father, who in the shadow of divorce, was still there, doing what he was called to do and be? Or will they remember a father who let his past, and his fear, and his anger turn him into little more than a passing thought? What this dad cannot see now, is though his concerns are legitimate and understandable, they are not real. They are mere ghosts. It’s what he does from this point that will determine if they melt away or forever haunt him.
I used his same fear to drive me, a way of molding myself into a father I could never have been otherwise. Outside the shadow of his mom, I was presented an opportunity to create a relationship with my children that would have been impossible had the divorce not happen. The terror of being forgotten inspired me to become a father who would be worthy of remembering. After more than a decade now, my children will tell you there is no question about who their father is. Even amid the confusion, frustration, and heartbreak that divorce causes children, I know they feel me as their one and only dad. Today we have a unique bond that I am convinced would have never formed without divorce. It’s satisfaction, and blessing, that is priceless.
It’s one of God’s many gifts that children are wired to know who their father is. It’s something that can’t be erased by divorce or a stepfather. But the way that father is remembered has everything to do with the man. That is on us. We alone are responsible for becoming fathers worthy of remembering. The fear of being forgotten, to worry about becoming a fun uncle, to tremble at being replaced by another, all these are merely distractions to the work we are called.
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For this dad, I would conclude with this. Mourn what is being lost. Grieve for what can no longer be, but don’t do so forever. Do not let what you are feeling now turn you callous, full of anger and resentment. Do not let it blind you to what awaits ahead. Do not let your fears and worries distract you from being the man and father those boys need and deserve. Stay focused on what you can control, be the safe harbor in an otherwise restless ocean. Find forgiveness; forgiveness for their mother, for the man she will one day find, but most importantly for yourself. Teach those boys that nothing will separate them from the love of their father. Be a shining example of what manhood looks like in the face of overwhelming sorrow. Model for them a true masculinity that his honorable, humble and heavenly. You do that, and nothing, and I mean nothing, can strip from your sons’ memories that they have a father.
A father who was there and never to be forgotten.
Originally posted April 2016