Not for You - It's for Them - Consider the Children

Описание: Consider the Children is a parenting class that people going through divorce in Washington State are required to participate in. When I first realized I'd have to take the course, I thought I knew what it would be like. I've taken so many classes about kids, from Growth and Development to Education Law, and I've read so many books about the adolescent body and mind. I thought I knew it all. Of course, I knew my kids still need their dad. Even though he left me and walked out on them, too. He hovers and hesitates, circling back to them, and retreating. My anger, disappointment, and grief have overwhelmed me and I can't hide it. During the course, they talk about their own divorces, their stepchildren, and they show video clips of children of divorce talking about how it makes them feel. In the chat, other people type in how they feel about their separations and how they think their kids feel. The silence your phone pops off for one man and I can hear him laughing and talking to friends, while I'm balling my eyes out. He's one of them. One of the men who it's hard to forgive, who don't understand their impact on their children, who think that leaving the mother isn't a harm to their own child, that think breaking up is between the adults. It's not. Becoming a family is a package deal. When you bring life into the world, you promise them to do better for them than you would do for yourself. You do not sacrifice their joy for your own. And how can you be happy, if you are hurting them? I've grieved for my husband in one way or another for decades. I carried his burdens, I felt his pain, I hurt when I felt his absence while he was next to me, and I have a burning in my soul for what he's put me through. Words cannot express my heartache. Or my anger. Or any of the many complicated feelings that are interweaving and mingling and contorting... But one thing is simple. I love my children. And they love their dad. Like I love my mom and I love my dad, may he rest in peace in the arms of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I love my dad, even though he destroyed my mother. I am my father. I am my mother. I am their best and their worst parts. Just like my children must be their father and me, too. How can they love themselves, if they can't forgive their dad? When his blood runs through their precious existence, his DNA determining much of who they will be. I can't be the mother they need, if I can't forgive him. Not for him. Not for him. He doesn't want or deserve my forgiveness. But, my kids deserve to have two parents. I don't need to prove I'm right. What has transpired is self-evident. I can forgive. Oh my God, give me the strength to grow. And to heal. Reveal a side of myself that doesn't yet exist. Let me rise up from the ashes, to become alive again, and to grow in my capacity to let go of what I cannot change, to forgive the time he stole from me, the love he wasted, the trust he betrayed. May the Lord help me to let him go. To let the betrayal go. To forgive him, so they can love their dad without feeling like their love for him is a betrayal to me. Amen.