I don’t remember all the that lead to once again being in the old neighborhood, where we had once been so happy.....
* This is dedicated to my children Faith (my daughter) and TJ (my son) and to my grandchildren Dayson and Kyree ... and everyone who has a child, was a child or has known or maybe was a lonely child. Learn from my life and my mistakes, live a better life. You don't have to make my mistakes.
Faith Sings A Song
As a divorced father, I was totally unaware of the fact, that what I thought was necessary to be able to take care of my kids and be with my kids in the way I thought I suppose to do, was not nearly as important as my just being with them and my simply being available to them.
On the day in particular that I specifically learned this lesson,the details are still somewhat cloudy. For instance I don’t remember all that lead to my once again being in the old neighborhood where we had last lived as a family. Thinking back to then, even the circumstances that had initially allowed us to own a home had been extraordinary, and in some ways what some might say were a once in a lifetime event, now I can see we were just simply blessed.
But even in that circumstance I realized that my marriage was deteriorating, and the purchase of a home was an all out effort on my part to save the marriage, whereas maybe many people in the same situation might have given up and moved on long before I did. But being a child of devoiced parents, I never wanted my kids to have those experiences be a circumstance for them. So I hung in and believed the marriage would work out, after all it was a marriage and marriages were suppose to work, as I had been taught marriage was holy matrimony, a convenient and as such it couldn’t fail, or could it? But yet now in retrospect it seems it has.
Of course I l had long wanted to visit my kids, I also wished I had visited them more often than I had, but to be frank it also hurt so much to revisit the place where all those dreams failed, and to also have it be for reasons that I never was quiet able to understand … was hard too. My marriage was not one that ended in concrete reasons as to why we couldn’t have made it work, it just came down to changes that she refused to make, and I realized I couldn’t live within those choices. So after 17 years of waiting for things to change, I felt as if my life was given over to realities that were all they would ever be.
Now I just remember walking up to the door of where we had once been so happy to at one time call our home, and now all I could think of was that ...I didn’t have any of the gifts I thought I should have had, none of the money I thought I needed, and I was even thinking how much gas I needed for the trip home, or what if they wanted to go to a restaurant and eat out or what if they needed anything, what was I suppose to do then? Also I was not sure after all this time of not seeing them what I was to expect. So it was like I was living one of those moments where everything moved in slow motion.
Then all of a sudden there my daughter Faith was, peeking out of the upstairs window, having heard a car drive up, and then seeing it was me, she ran downstairs screaming, eventually bursting out the front door as if she was getting out of school, and running into my arms, throwing her arms around my neck, her legs around my waist and singing a song I’ll never, ever forget … it went something like this … daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy … daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy …
All I remember is the smile on her face, and the look in her eyes as she ran to me excitedly, throwing her arms around my neck, I hugged her, and she was still singing that song
I don’t remember what we did that day, I don’t remember what we did after that moment. I just remember thinking whoa, she loves me still, she still loves me. Whoa, she loves me still, she still loves me?
I have often thought of that time and that experience when I am faced with choices where I felt there were no way, or any choice I could make that was an option where I could “win”, in those times I think this one thought …I just never want to disappoint my daughter, or my son ever, and I never want them to ever have to doubt that I love them, I hope my daughter always has a reason to sing the “daddy song”.
* Also too it might be that my son and I are estranged, we haven’t talked for sometime, still I know he cares and more than anything else, he’s hurt, and possibly angry, who can blame him, I trust his judgment, I helped to raise him, I know what sort of person he is. I think he maybe expected that the one person who would never hurt him or let him down would be me, so maybe it’s justified that he is disappointed? I hope his children will someday sing his name, even after he has learned he was wrong in anything he might have thought he knew. Dad’s are just people, kids are just people and either is only as strong as we accept the love that God gives us. And by his grace, he’s patiently waiting for us to come into a clearer understanding of his truth, and still he waits and loves us as we all stumble off and along that path. I wonder how many times, we have hurt God in that effort, thinking we're doing what we think is right? Let me say right here and now ... thank you God, thank you Father, thank you very much, for everything.
I guess everyday can't be a day where someone will love us without exception-and sing ...the daddy song ...
But some of us have heard it, and some of us hear it still ... daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy …
daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy … I'm just thankful for the memory.
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