Father's Day, Undeserved

If I could have been around during the time of the ancient Egyptians, I might have begged them to create a 364 day year, rather than a 365.  In my view, for me anyway, Father’s Day can skip right on by, unnoticed.  I do not deserve it in the least.

Before any of my readers boot up some comments that vehemently disagree with the above statement, let me explain.  By the end of this post, you will agree with my premise and run me out of town with pitchforks.  I thank God, every day, that my wife and children have not done just that.

Two weeks before I married my bride, we discovered that we were pregnant.  I have watched hundreds of movies, read thousands of books, and possibly have watched millions of commercials that portray the moment of discovery of life in the womb.  One thread that I have noticed is that, if the mother and father of the impending child are in a loving relationship, news of the baby in the womb is a moment of joy.  Tears of happiness are frequently reported as being the norm.  The glow of the unequaled uniqueness of the new beginnings of human life between a couple is unparalleled.

At that point in my life, that was most definitely not my reaction.  What happened next has been etched in my brain as being descriptive of how I saw my children then and how I mostly view them now.  I wrapped my arms around my bride-to-be and sighed heavily, saying, “Well, guess we need to start saving.”

That elicited a cool response from her that I did not understand at the time.  We had excellent communication – meaning we argued very well and very loudly – and I learned quickly that I was much different than her.  She loved children.  I did not.

I grew up in a Bill Gothard household.  No, not a Christian home, but rather, a Bill Gothard home.  Every little word and thought that came from his mouth and materials and those that followed him, became scripture in our minds.  One foundational “theological” idea that became a part of me was that children were a blessing from God.  While I do not disagree with that statement, the way that we were taught that God required us to practice that thought is what has destroyed my relationship with my children now, and what I will be fighting against for the rest of my fatherhood – hoping one day to crawl into the sunshine of loving and enjoying every moment I am given with my six beautiful offspring.

We were taught that God opened and closed the womb.  This meant that birth control of any form was wrong.  All married couples were required to have a large family as a badge of holiness.  A man, having his quiver full of these blobs of flesh, was akin to being an apostle of Jesus Christ, given the tongues of fire at Pentecost, enabling him to sit in the gates of the city and wield his power, wisdom, and influence on those less capable than he.

It was impressed on us that finances were of no consequence.  In fact, to worry about proportionate amounts of money to children was sin of the gravest kind.  You were to squirts out these lumps of flesh every nine or so months and God would magically provide all your resources, leaving you happy and unworried, all the days of your life.

Intimate love between husband and wife was secondary at best and usually or always dead last to nonexistent.  A husband never had the chance to get to know his wife without the responsibilities of another human being at stake.  There were always babies to take care of and kids to deal with.

This, as well as many other “principles”, was supposed to embody true happiness.

So we lived it.  We had our first daughter seven months after we were married.  We had financial troubles and fought.  We had our second daughter the next year.  We had financial troubles and fought.  We had our first son the next year.  We had financial troubles and fought.  My wife miscarried a year later.  I shrugged my shoulders in relief and could not relate to her grief.  We had financial troubles and fought.  We had another daughter and another son.  We had financial troubles and fought.  Then our lives turned from stressful to absolutely unbearable, financially, emotionally, physically, and any other aspect you can put your finger on.  During that time, my wife became pregnant with our sixth and final child – a daughter.

She, being completely and utterly overwhelmed with the responsibilities of her quiver full life, wept.

 I woke up.

Why was my wife crying when she had told me that she wanted a large family?  Why was I indifferent to every single child that entered our lives?  Why did we agree on a perfect number of twenty-nine children and then grief strikes when we discovered that we were coming up on six?

At every birth in the hospital delivery room, I was very good at being the man my wife needed during the delivery.  But, every time the child came forth, I would internally rip myself to shreds with iron hooks and a machete, knowing full well that my heart was cold.  I had absolutely no love for that lump of flesh.  None.  It was just another check mark in my own personal quiver.  I hated myself with new vigor with each addition to our family.  I felt I was heartless and unloving.  I saw that my children were being loved by their mother and “put up with” by their father.  A good recipe for them to hate me in the end.

I was taught that children were a badge of glory for me.  I wasn’t taught how to love them.  I was taught that my children needed to be spanked for every thought, word, and deed that I disagreed with.  I wasn’t taught how to give them a hug and learn to laugh at how their mind worked and the small joys of growing up.  I was taught that a baby needed to think like an adult and have its will under complete control toward its superior.  I wasn’t taught how to cry with them when they were teething, weep with them when they had a high fever, wince with them when they got a shot, almost die with them when they contracted whooping cough from other stupid non-immunizing families, laugh with them when they wanted to be giggly during a meal prayer, feed them when they were hungry, load them up with sugar just because sugar was delicious.  I was taught many things.  And I turned out a failure of a father.

I have learned to hate my children.  They don’t clean when I want them to.  They don’t go to bed when told.  They ride in the street on their bikes when they know it’s forbidden.  They unroll toilet paper until it is down to the cardboard roll and then put it in a bucket which they fill with water and then dump down the toilet, which plugs the toilet, water spilling all over the floor.  They draw on my walls with everything from pencils to permanent markers to charcoal briquettes.  They leave pockets full of crayons in their pants which colors a load pretty well in the heat of a dryer.  They spill their milk.  They wet their diapers.  They throw up.  They drool.  They don’t clean.  Did I mention they don’t clean?

In other words, they are children.  Kids.  Little people.  Not grown up.  Not adults.  Not as mature as I am.  Learning.  Loving life.  Loving to touch things that need to be touched to experience the experiential.  Needing to taste everything.  Needing to try everything once to see if it is something that should be tried again.  Making mistakes.  Doing things right.  Desiring the love of their daddy.  Getting the love of their mommy.  Wondering why their daddy is always yelling at them.  Seeing that their daddy’s love is conditional, proportional to the cleanly state of the house.  Crying inside, wishing their daddy would love them.  Crying openly in a dark hallway, begging for a perfect daddy when the stupid, imperfect daddy yells at them that he wants perfect kids.

My wife and I rectified the “problem” of birthing too many children than we could handle about six months ago.  It finally opened my eyes to the fact that the six I had was all that I was ever going to have.  I realized I didn’t want to mess it up.  So I purposed that I was going to turn a new leaf.  I still purpose that every week or so, consistently moving one step forward and two steps backward.

I watch in disbelief as my wife’s love for my children grows deeper by the day.  She LOVES them, faults and all.  I WANT to love them despite what I deem are faults.  More than likely, what I see as faults are just curious little people running around, loving life and desiring to be loved.

I hate myself, as defined by fatherhood.  I do not deserve to be a daddy to my kids.  They deserve something much better than me.  They deserve love.  They deserve a dad who wants to play catch with them on the lawn when it needs to be mowed.  They deserve a daddy that will spill his cup of milk when they spill theirs, just to get a laugh and let them know that it’s okay.  They deserve much more than me.

Don’t get me wrong.  I play with my kids here and there.  We wrestle.  I’m a fun daddy.  They love me with all of my faults.  They show me what true and unconditional love is, on a minute by minute basis.  But I cannot buy that type of love forever.  They will soon grow up and need more.  They will need what I desire to have on the outside, actually on the outside, rather than just a pipe dream theory that I am working on.

As you can see, I am in the beginning stages of healing.  Bill Gothard taught me to see children as a reflection of myself.  He never taught me who children really were.  They are not objects to be formed and molded in my hands.  They are there as human beings, a beautiful creation of a mixture of my wife and I, desiring to be infused with love, knowledge, hope, courage, wisdom and happiness.  If any one person in this family needs to be malleable, it is me.  And I am ready and willing.

I am very slowly learning to love my children.  In ten years, they will look back and see two entirely different daddies.  The hateful, despicable, selfish, haughty, loud one, and then the one that mattered.

One day, I will celebrate Father’s Day with joy in my heart – knowing without a shadow of a doubt that that day was well deserved.  I will know that by the vibrancy in my children’s souls.  But most importantly, I will know it by the dozen eggs cracked and spilling their yellow liquid all over the kitchen floor, which I just skated through in my socks, to the squealing laughter of my beautiful children.