Did I Shield My Children From Their Father’s Anger Too Well?

Did I Shield My Children From Their Father’s Anger Too Well?

They want to spend the summer with him...

It was only 400 years ago that most people still believed that the earth was the center of the solar system. You’d think that once we discovered that not to be true, we might have developed a stronger sense of wonder of it all and begin to look outward for ways we might make the world a better place.

The sadness of our planet has me feeling blue. Sons killing their mothers and sisters. A lost soul taking out his anger and fears by blasting the very life out of over a dozen strangers he never met. Groups of fanatics blowing up vehicles and killing dozens and dozens to, what, make a point that they can? Has the world gone mad?

Folks in the Midwest battling freezing temperatures and flooding. An earthquake erupts 150 miles northeast of Rome destroying over fifteen hundred buildings, leaving a hundred thousand people without a home and dozens more dead or missing in the rubble buried alive.

A hostile country defying the rules and simply daring the world to react when they fire their missiles. It is all so un-Godly that it breaks my heart.

This summer my son and daughter will go together for the first time to visit their father in South Mississippi. I am torn about my feelings. I worry about my ex’s lack of responsibility. See, he thinks the world revolves around him, so why should he stop and pay attention and reach out and help, well, anyone?

He’s been sober and clean, or so he sounds as though he is. I can never be sure. I’ve seen this cycle before. My son and daughter are excited, but my daughter wants the visit to last only a few weeks whereas my son wants to stay with his father forever. At least that’s what he says, now.

I want them to enjoy their time with their father. He is their father, and they do love him, and I have to accept that they have feelings for him that I could never share. My father was not a perfect man by any stretch, and his alcoholism was hard to take, but I still loved him and wanted to be with him.

All the years I was married I protected and shielded my children from their father’s anger, his rages, his drinking and drugging and his physical abuse of me. I did that job only too well I fear, for today neither really thinks those things actually happened. Their father feeds their little minds with mis-truths and exaggerations and a pared down version of what really happened. And I do not refute it. Much.

Where do you draw the line between loving your children and educating them about the harsh reality of not just life, but their lives in particular and their father’s? It’s something I wrestle with every day.

I am a God-fearing woman, but my children are such an important and valued part of my universe. How can I let them go?  How can I let my son go? If I try to keep him, will I lose him in the end?

Well, let’s see, May 30 is still almost two months away – that’s plenty of time for my ex to ruin his life and perhaps meet a timely death. One can only hope. One can only hope.