A Family for Everyone?

   At my church there is a big sign in the lobby that says "a family for everyone" and I roll my eyes every time.  They are good people and honestly mean it when they try to include everyone, but even the most dedicated outreach will miss someone who is drowning right under their noses.

    Some time ago a friend reposted this picture of a lion chasing a zebra colt with the caption "when people say they don't need the church."  The implication is that we are safer in the herd of the church family where we are safely protected by our close association of our close relationships with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

                                    

    There is a problem with this metaphor, zebras don't have families.  They don't give a damn if that poor zebra colt gets eaten.  They only associate into herds because the odds of being attacked drop dramatically with large numbers of other targets in close proximity.  In this picture there are a dozen zebras looking at the child about to be eaten and they are passively looking on with an expression of "glad that's not me".  

    What that caption is assuming is that zebra are like horses.  Horses have a tight knit family that will fight for each other.  If there had been a foal in danger from a lion, the stallion would be charging, the mares would be guarding the other foals, and the lion would be the one running for its life.  If one of their herd is injured, they will surround and guard the hurt family member as long as possible until they recover.  Lions still get their fair share of horses, but not without the family doing everything possible to protect the lost.

    That's where today's church is failing miserably.  Today's church is what I like to call "the Sunday morning country club" where all the wonderful popular people go to see and be seen.  Meanwhile the hurt and wounded are simply abandoned and left to bleed out on the front steps.  Far too many people come looking for some connection and are simply excluded from the cliques that tend to form.    

    The most damning example of this in my life is the way our church forgot about my children. My older kids have all quit attending because they felt ignored and excluded.  No one at the church even noticed or cared that three orphan kids just disappeared.  James 1:27 specifically commands the church to minister to widows and orphans, but today's church seems to deliberately exclude single parents and their kids.

    Of course many people have had a good experience and have found a community in the local church.  I'm genuinely happy that so many have had a very different experience at church than I did.  Some have been welcomed with open arms and I'm glad they were.  However, it hasn't been that way for me and my family.

    

What was mommy like?

     A couple years after Sarah passed, we were visiting San Antonio and I was pointing out places where we had lived and explored when we lived there.  As I was driving away I had the sudden realization that all those stories would die with me and the kids wouldn't have any way to know what kind of person their mother was.  The scrapbooks, piles of pictures, and other memorabilia are great but need context to fill out  into a complete story.

    Andrew and James were too young to remember anything beyond the vaguest memories.  Patrick, Laura, and Clint remember her but they don't know anything about her early life, what her childhood was like, how she and I met, what our life was like before they were born, and what kind of person she was.    Those memories are an important part of what kind of person they will grow into.  

    So when I got back from that trip I decided to write Sarah's biography.  I would write out her life story as best I could and print it out on hard paper for them.  I took some diaries that Sarah had written where I could quote her directly, and solicited memories from people who had known her before to supplement my own recollections.  

    Once I had enough data I started writing out the story of her life.  Her early life I only had a few notes and my memories of what she had told me about her upbringing.  I'm sure that I didn't paint a full picture but I was able to give a basic outline of her first 20 years.  I had to be delicate about how much detail to include without upsetting her mother.  Sarah had a difficult relationship with her parents, her dad in particular.  Everything I knew bout the Springer family came from hearsay and I didn't see the upside to pissing off my in-laws, so I omitted some details.

    Once we got to Sept 1999, I was on more familiar territory pulling from my own memory.  I was writing the story manifestly from my own perspective, but I tried my best to include all the ups and downs of our early relationship.  It was a wonderful trip down memory lane full of funny stories, adventures, long times apart, and eventually a wedding.

    I chronicled the process of her admission and studies at Med School.  Her struggles matching into a residency, eventually completing her training as an Emergency Physician treating patients in the emergency room of the hospital.  She loved her job despite all the challenges that the chaos in the ER.

    At the end I did the best I could to recount the circumstances of her sudden and untimely passing.  I referenced the NPS report and what I learned from a couple of phone calls with the people involved and compiled a basic narrative of what happened.  This was a hard chapter to write, but I hope that knowing the details of what happened will help everyone heal.

    Once I was done, I had someone properly edit my poor grammar and had several hard copies printed up.  I gave one to all the kids with a lock of her hair tucked inside and a personal note written in the front cover.  I also gave hard copies to Sarah's parents, brothers, and some of the close friends.  I sent these out as Christmas gifts.

       One aspect of this project that I didn't anticipate was that working through this would put a lid on my grief process.   By the time I was done writing Sarah's story on paper I had a sense that my grief was now in remission.  My memories of Sarah were preserved for our kids to reflect on when they get older.  

"You're such a great dad!!!!"

    If there is a single phrase that pisses me off more than any other its this one, "You're such a great dad!"

    I always replay "Thank you" but really I am thinking "How the hell would you know?  You don't know me or my kids, much less have spent enough time with them to know if I'm a good dad or not."  Telling me "you're a good dad" implies that you have seen my effort to parent my kids and judged the results to be at least above average.  It also implies that you have a close relationship with me and my kids and seen what we look like when things are messy and falling apart.  A true judgment of my character requires you to see me when I fall down on my ass (which happens a lot more than I'd like).   People who know me and are invested enough to point out my failures are virtually non-existent.

    Outside of a handful of close family most of the people on social media and casual acquaintances couldn't even name all my kids.  I think the list of people who really know my kids is less than can be counted on two hands, and all the rest are just saying meaningless platitudes or are reacting to the social media highlight reel of our vacations.  I'm proud of the adventures that are documented on Facebook, but that's not why I plan them.  I would prefer that we could share some of these travels with family or friends in person.

    The simple facts are that my family is surviving, not thriving.  A single dad with 5 kids (2 that are autistic) has an uphill battle under the best of circumstances but trying to do this job with no support network from family, friends, or church is one man doing a three man job.  The church is absolutely worthless to single parents, and modern day extended family is even worse.  I think my kids have only met  one set of their cousins once or twice in their entire lives.  The church used to supply a surrogate family that could fill in, but today's church didn't even notice when we stopped coming.

    Every family has their struggles but mine are compounded by the social isolation of only having a single dad.  Then that issue is multiplied by my spiritual gift of social invisibility which has regrettably been passed on to my kids.  I'm currently preparing for my 9 year old's birthday don't think I can take another party with no guests.  My 13 year old struggles with autism just bad enough to make him socially awkward, but he understands enough to know what he is missing.  When my daughter pours her heart out to me about not being able to make friends at school, I don't have anything to say other than "get used to it" (which I obviously don't say).  If the primary job of a parent is to get our kids ready for independence then I am failing.  

    Sarah would have been a lot better at this. She would have been able to give the kids the attention and guidance they need.  She would have been able to maintain the adult relationships that would give the kids the network of friends they need.

    I guess I should give myself some credit where it's due.  I have seen plenty of stories of single parents who crawled into a bottle and neglected their kids.  I've managed to clear that low bar.  However that would be like saying I was a hero just because I served my full USMC enlistment during peacetime.  It means that I have done just enough to keep CPS from taking my kids away.

    If any of these people really cared about me or my kids they would pick up the phone and call.  If they wanted my kids to thrive they would be reaching out to help them.  Jesus said "If you love me, feed my sheep" and my sheep need all the help they can get.  

Instead of being an encouragement, "you're a great dad" is actually a slap in my face because I know better.  I'm mediocre at best and hearing meaningless platitudes from people who can't be bothered to reach out and actually help just pisses me off.

I would like to specially mention the handful of people who really have stepped up to help my kids.  Our old neighbors who have been my first call for the past 5 years, the ladies in my life who reached out to my daughter, and my brother and sister in law who have invited and hosted us often.  You guys have been a rock that I could lean on when I really needed someone.

Five years

 Five years since we lost Sarah.  

    That's half a decade of being alone and missing my "better half".   Five sets of birthdays, five Christmases, five summers, five back to schools, and a constant hole in our hearts.  It's been a long time but losing a spouse is a wound that never really heals.   The isolation of being a single parent can be overwhelming at times and even five years later there are days that all I can do is get through till bed time.  

    The little boys don't remember her at all, yet they still have that hole in their lives.  Meanwhile the older kids and I can't forget her and miss her even more so.  A few years back I realized that many of the stories of Sarah would die with me, so I decided to put them down in a permanent record.  I wrote a biography of Sarah as best I could, had it printed and gave copies to family and friends as Christmas gifts.  Each child has a copy saved with a lock of her hair taped into the front cover.

    Having said that, it's been five years and we have done a lot of healing and growing.  We've had five wonderful summer of travel and adventures.  Five wonderful family gatherings at Thanksgiving.  Five healthy growing kids that drive me crazy and make me so proud at the same time.  We all have healed with our grief as much as we possibly can.  Clint is almost a grown man now.  Laura is developing into a wonderful young woman.  Patrick, James & Andrew are growing and becoming their own individual selves.

    They've grown and matured and gotten to experience so many amazing places and experiences.  In the past five years, we've traveled all over the country including 36 states, all three coasts.  We've lost and added pets.  We've bought and sold several vehicles which have carried us on those adventures.  Trailer and a Motorhome for our summer travels.  An airplane of my very own to fly after 25 years of "somedays".  We are a very different family than what moved to Ft Worth from Longview seven years ago.  

    I've gone through many changes and I'm both a very different person, yet the same man I was before we lost Sarah.  I've never lost my faith in God, yet have completely lost my faith in his followers.  The church is absolutely shirking its' responsibility to single parents.  After 40 years of trying to fit in with the church crowd I finally realized that God has that door closed for his reasons.  

    The kids have learned to swim, ride bikes, drive, cook, clean, sew, build, and will hopefully someday fly.  They have shown their strengths and weaknesses as they have matured.  I'm doing my best to guide and teach them, but raising 5 kids (two of whom are autistic) is a three man job that I have to do by myself with no support network to speak of.

    I've had to reenter the dating game and enjoy the highs and many many lows of that mess.  I've had to endure the rejection after rejection on top of grief.  Modern dating involves a lot more time on the internet and a lot more of the phenomena of "ghosting".   Despite all those hurdles,  I've even opened my heart to love again, but realized that just because you love someone, they may not be right for you.  Sometimes the most loving thing you can do for someone is to break up with them.

It's been a long but amazing five years.

It's been 4 years since I really applied myself to writing here, but I feel the need to return and start putting my thoughts down on paper.  I doubt anyone really reads these things anymore, particularly my modest effort.  However, I'm going to try to keep adding to this in the future.