She Still Needs Her Dad...

My daughter was sick last night.

She woke me at 2 A.M. needing her dad. She has been trying a new medication and it made her terribly nauseated. She’s nineteen. She knows how to take care of herself when something like this happens. But she still needed her dad to get her downstairs to the couch, get her some water, and feel her forehead with the back of his hand. She needed to be reminded that she isn’t alone.

In truth…I needed this too.

We’ve been here in Lynchburg for three and a half years now. That’s the longest uninterrupted period of living in the same house that we’ve had since she was born. Her mom left when Daisy was only eighteen months old. From that point on, it was once a week and every other weekend and two months in the summer. Even the two months were broken up with her mom having my visitation schedule.

I never fully felt like a dad. I felt like my entire fatherhood was broken into bits and pieces, like Morse code. Dot, dot, dot…dash, dash, dash…dot, dot, dot. The thirteen years between our divorce and her moving here with me felt like I was lost at sea, trying desperately to swim against the tide, struggling beneath the waves and only catching a gasping breath whenever she was with me and I could breathe. As soon as I’d take her back to her mom’s, I’d disappear under the turbulent waters again. Drowning. Sinking.

I came across a picture on Facebook yesterday. It popped up on that “Your memories From ____ Years Ago” thing. It was my daughter back home at St. Anthony’s Italian Festival. She was nine years old, smiling brightly, clutching a stuffed penguin she’d won at some midway game and waiting to get on the Ferris Wheel with me.

Smiling.

My daughter doesn’t smile much now. She stopped smiling and being a bubbly, outgoing, happy kid when her mom’s second husband took off his mask of decency and showed the monster he really is. From age twelve, until we escaped Nashville and moved here to Lynchburg when she was sixteen, she endured mental and physical abuse enough to drive that bubbly, smiling girl into hiding. He wore her down with every kind of cruelty. He killed her pet. He destroyed her property, including things I gave her on birthdays and holidays. Things shared between a daddy and his little girl. Notes I would include in birthday cards. He would “edit” them and mark them up. He intruded on my fatherhood every chance he got. He stopped short of sexual assault –or he’d be a missing person on the back of a milk carton right now—but everything else was on the table in his sick mind.

Her mom did nothing to stop this. She was too concerned with her own life. She often sided with her husband, against our daughter, in order to keep the peace. She essentially sacrificed Daisy’s well-being, for her own.

It finally got bad enough and I took a job in Virginia and she left with me. She escaped the remnants of her childhood.

This was not the life I wanted for my child. Or for me. I wanted a happy home and a house and peace. I wanted my daughter to be healthy and happy and to reach her potential. I wanted to be the best dad anyone ever had, and to experience fatherhood from the adult side and hopefully make up for how fatherhood looked from the child’s view that I had when I was her age. Instead I got sawdust fatherhood. The fragments that remain after the whole has been cut into pieces, again and again until nothing remains but the shavings and dust that stand as evidence that there really was something there once.

All of which brings me to last night. There are a lot of men who would be upset over losing a half night’s sleep with a sick nineteen-year-old child. “I have to work in the morning.” “I get up at 4:45 am!” “You’re an adult, you can take care of yourself.”

And she can.

But there were so many times over those thirteen years, when she was sick, and hurting, and often in real danger, and I couldn’t help her. My fragmented time with her leaves me aching for those days when she was that smiling little nine-year-old girl in the photo. Times when I would have loved nothing more than to have carried her downstairs to the couch, felt her forehead with the back of my hand, and stroked her hair until she fell asleep.

But I had to settle for phone calls and five days a month.

So, I don’t mind when she needs me now. I don’t rue the lost sleep or the groggy feeling when the alarm went off this morning at 4:45 and I was seriously thinking of taking a sick day. This would have been my life a dozen years ago, and instead it’s my life now. I’m okay with that. It’s what dads do. Good ones anyway.

I nurse her back to health daily as it is. Back to emotional health. I’ve laid the back of my hand to her forehead and felt the cold, clammy feeling of a broken spirit. I’ve comforted the tears and frustration that she’s cried over the neglect and indifference that her mom has shown, both while she was being so abused in her mom’s home, and especially since we’ve moved here. They don’t talk much. Her mom has been here once in almost four years, and that was a brief, overnight visit. Nineteen-year-old women process that as abandonment. That’s because it is abandonment. I’ve held her hand as she’s been nauseated in her soul over the childhood she lost. Over the time we missed together. I’m doing my best to nurse her back to health.

So, no…I don’t mind losing half a night of sleep to take care of my adult daughter. Because in truth, nursing her back to health is also nursing me back. Every chance I get to act like the dad I am inside, goes a long way toward healing the loss I’ve felt over the years after the divorce. And maybe, to heal the loss I felt long before that, in the deep hole that existed in my own heart, because of my own father and his abandonment.

I’ve never felt his hand on my fevered forehead. Never heard his voice speak in the soft tones that dads use when their child is sick. Never felt his fingers brush my hair aside or his lips kiss my forehead as I drifted off to sleep, comforted in my illness by the presence of a loving, caring father.

I know what it means to my daughter, because I needed it too.

I could have quit. During those hard years after our divorce when my heart broke daily because I missed my daughter so much, and those five brief days each month were not even remotely enough to assuage my pain.

I could have packed it in when I lost my career in 2008 and had to live in my car because there was no work. I could have left to find a job somewhere else and just dutifully sent money and called once a week.

But I stayed. I stayed, and kept her trust, even though I was so limited in my ability to act on that trust. I stayed. And when the time came that she could take no more and had to get away…I was still there, ready to take her out of that hell and move her to safety.

You dads who are reading this, (it’s posted on both my personal website and my divorced dads blog) I encourage you not to quit. I encourage you to look squarely at the hell you must endure, stiffen your shoulders, brush aside your tears, and stand your ground.

Take whatever your ex, her husband, and the courts throw at you and stand your ground. The day will come. The day will come when the only knight left in the kingdom who can slay the dragon that pursues your child…is you. If you aren’t there –even with battered armor and a rusty sword—the dragon wins.

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Never, never let that happen.

Staying Even When You Want To Leave

It's 6:30 AM on July 19, 2017.

I'm sitting in my kitchen, getting ready to go to work. 

I've been contemplating this return to writing here on my blog. I haven't written nearly as much as I used to and almost nothing in recent years. So much has happened. I considered, at one point, deleting this blog. I thought maybe it had run it's course. But every day I get hits. 20, 30, 50...

Every day, a large number of dads stumble across this page in their sorrow and sadness and find some measure of peace. 

There is a pattern. I get the heaviest traffic on Sunday nights and Mondays. I know exactly why. That's the day most of us take our kids back to their mother's and we are alone again. Mondays are the first day we wake up without them after a weekend visit. The pain is crushing. 

I lived that way for 15 years. My daughter was only 18 months old when we divorced and I spent her entire childhood, rebounding from the pain of every-other-weekend fatherhood. 

I watched as her life disintegrated because of her mother's second marriage. I rescued her many times from the clutches of the animal her mom was married to. 

In 2008 I lost my career and then my home when the economy collapsed. Because her life was in such turmoil, I could not leave to find work. I had to stay in Nashville. So I stayed. That meat living in my car. I was homeless for 6 years, until 2014 when I was hired by my alma mater and my daughter moved here with me.

A lot of damage was done. She went from age ten to age 16 without her dad having a place to live. We lost our weekends together. I saw her during the week, and I'd pick her up on a Saturday to spend a few hours, but it wasn't the same. It hurt like nothing I can describe. But I stayed.

I stayed and I endured that horror because she needed me. 

I know there are a lot of guys reading this who are in the same boat. I know there are others who could not handle the disappointment and chose to leave. I know there are some reading this article this morning who are on the brink...you are facing divorce and you think the best thing is to just walk away. There are others who are like I was...so broken and crushed that you wonder how you're going to make it through another day. The pain from missing your kids is so great and your life feels so empty without them, that you consider not living at all. 

To those men I say, "Hold on." Even through tears, even through disappointment and mistreatment by your ex and by the courts and sometimes by your kids. Hold on. My daughter wasn't always aware of my sacrifices when I was making them, but she is now. Hold on.

There is hope. You can make it. There is a God in heaven who loves you. He sees your tears and feels the pain you feel. I have no secrets to how I endured six years of homelessness for the sake of my daughter except this...only my faith in Jesus Christ got me through. There were nights I considered just letting myself freeze to death. Or buying a bottle and drinking myself blind and letting myself die. But my faith sustained me. It wasn't pretty. I cried all the same tears. I suffered the same broken heart. But I did not suffer alone. Jesus walked each painful step.

Dads...do not give up. Do. Not. Give. Up. Find yourself in the faith I speak of here. Lean on the God who adores you and wants to help you through this. He loves you. He loves your children. 

Trust Him to give you the strength to stay till the end.

You are loved. 

You are still the daddy.

Craig

For you dad's who miss your kids and miss your fatherhood...

Dads...
I recorded this GREAT interview with former NFLer and now pastor Ed Tandy McGlasson as he discusses his books "The Difference a Father Makes" and "The Father You've Always Wanted."
Learn how to be the BEST dad there is, by becoming the son you were meant to be.

Click the link here: Interview with Ed Tandy McGlasson

All I ever Wanted was to be your Dad...Anticipation

I found out I was going to be a dad on my 33rd birthday. I suppose that's ironic. Or cathartic. It was frightening...I know that much. You spend your adult life thinking about the day you become a dad, and you are convinced you will do a great job. But when you find out it's actually going to happen you aren't so sure. Suddenly it became more important than ever that I make enough money, that we have a nice place to live, that we drive a safe car.
I knew instantly that I was going to do it differently than the examples I had growing up. My daughter would never fear me. Never. She would never feel dread when I pulled into the driveway at night. She'd never be afraid to speak her mind around me or to tell me what she was thinking or feeling. She was going to be totally free to be herself...because it was God who determined who she is and who she was going to be...not me. And my daughter was never going to chase me like a phantom. She would never beg to know me. I would not be a mystery and I would not reject her.
I had set to work years before -before even meeting her mom- working on my own fatherhood so I'd be ready. I read books, listened to seminars and worked on becoming a great dad. Because I knew that if I didn't create the habit of great fatherhood, I would simply revert to the model I had growing up. That would become my default. I couldn't do that to my daughter.
Every day, as that tiny little form grew bigger and the bump in her mom's belly became more pronounced, I was preparing my heart. I was imagining holding her in my arms. Singing to her. Telling her about God, about her mom, about her daddy and how much he loves her. There was a moment when Holly was about 7 months pregnant that I will never forget. Each night, I had been in the habit of placing a paper-towel tube against Holly's belly and talking to Morgan. I always said the same thing: "Hi Morgan, it's your daddy. I love you and I can't wait to see you!". One night, around that seven months mark, we were lying in bed and I did this again with the tube and as soon as I said "Hi Morgan it's your daddy..." She kicked...very pronounced. Holly and I both laughed and cried. Our daughter was not even here yet but she knew her daddies voice and she knew what it sounded like when he told her he loved her. Something neither of us had heard ourselves.
Morgan entered this world wanted and expected. We anticipated her arrival. She was a blessing to us.
My own arrival was scandalous and shameful for my mother and father. It demanded his abandoning his plans and spending 30 months in the hell of Vietnam, when he really wanted to finish his college degree. For my mother, it was humiliating and embarrassing and it didn't end at all the way she'd hoped. I was born to a couple of Twenty-year olds who didn't want kids yet. Each had plans. Both had to rethink them.
My daughter was my plan. She is my dream. She makes me who I am and who I was always supposed to be.
Many times during those long 9 months waiting for her arrival I would imagine the conversations we would one day have. each would begin and end with "I love you". because that is the only foundation a child really desires.
          "Dear Morgan,
                The day is getting closer. I can close my eyes and feel you here with your mom and me. I can picture what you'll look like. I can't wait! I am so excited I just want to jump out of my skin! You are everything I have been waiting for since I was a young man. I've worked hard to become a dad...long before I found out I would be one. I don't know how well I'll do the job, but I promise I'll do my very best. While God is knitting you together in your momma's womb, I am praying He makes me the best dad I can be...the dad He wants for you. I love you already. All I ever wanted was to be your dad"

New blog series..."All I Ever Wanted Was To Be Your Dad"

Good morning dads.
I'm beginning a new series this morning and I have the feeling that this will become a new book somewhere down the road.
I don't know how long I'll be writing this...each idea seems to yield a dozen more. But I'll write this until I feel like I'm done writing it. I don;t know where it's going...but I can tell you where it began.
My daughter turned 15 two weeks ago. 15 years have come and gone in the blink of an eye. That's true of all parenthood I suppose, but more so when you are divorced and your time is segmented and reduced by the order of a court and the inequity of visitation laws. Once a week and every other weekend is not equitable. You can't turn off your fatherhood on the days you don't have your kids. So you hold your breath on the days in between, listening to the time as it escapes your grasp and noticing how much they grow from week to week instead of the day-to-day that intact families experience.
My daughter's life is the greatest thing I have ever been a part of. She is the finest young woman I have ever known and there has been no point along this 15 year journey that she has not been the apple of my eye and the joy of my every day.
All I ever really wanted was to be a dad. From as early as I can remember, I knew that somehow being a dad would make up for not really having one myself. There was a man in my house. The man my mother married. But we wasn't my dad.  He merely married my mom and there wasn't a connection. There wasn't a bond. There wasn't love. My father is yet another story. I've spoken to him twice in my life and that's the way he wants it. I have cut him slack for 23 years while his stories changed and he avoided me, I'm all done excusing his shameful behavior. That's not how a man behaves. Period. I have accepted the fact that a man can be someone's father and not be their dad. That's my father. I won't mention either man again in this series. I am not writing this to explore my childhood, but my fatherhood. But in order to set up the background to my fatherhood, this stuff needed to be understood. When I became a dad I stood at a crossroads where I had to choose whether I would continue the pattern of fatherhood that was modeled in front of me as a child, or whether I would do the job the right way.
I chose to be a dad. I started learning how, years before my daughter was born and years before I even met her mom. I read books, watched seminars, read magazine articles. I also made mental notes about the great dads I had come to know. The fathers of friends of mine and men in my church. Sports coaches. I wanted to be a great dad when the time came.
     I was married for 7 months when my wife discovered we were pregnant. We were going out to dinner with some friends, celebrating my 34th birthday. Holly had been feeling "odd". The woman who was going to dinner with us described some of the things she felt when she was pregnant and Holly said "That sounds like me" I pulled into the nearest Walgreens and bought a pregnancy test kit. We continued on to the restaurant and Holly went to the ladies room and took all three test strips with her. All thing came back positive.
We tried to be cool and calm but we were scared. We had only been married for 7 months and had been practicing birth control like religion. We definitely wanted kids...just not right then.
By the next morning, we had accepted it and we were excited. I was calling all my friends and getting ready to start being a dad.
In hindsight, I became a dad that very night...as soon as I found out I was going to be one. From that day forward, everything I did and planned and hoped and dreamed was for this future child and the world I would give her. Had I known right away that I was having a girl, and had she been able to hear me and understand me, I think I would have told her...
     Dear Morgan,
          "Tonight your mom and I found out you were coming and we were going to be a mom and dad. I can't even begin to tell you how I feel tonight. How excited I am. How I already have begun dreaming dreams and planning plans. I am already praying for you and for me...so that I will be the best daddy a little girl could have. I am scared. being a dad is a huge thing and if I do it wrong, you will pay a higher price than I will. But if I do it right, your life will be exactly what God has in mind for it to be. I promise I will try. I will pray for you every day. I will never leave you alone. I will do everything I can to see your dreams come true...even if I have to surrender my own dreams along the way. I can;t wait to see you, to hold you in my arms, change your diaper, rock you to sleep, watch you while you dream and pray for you on my knees next to your bed. I wonder if you'll have blonde hair like your mom, or dark hair like me. I bet you'll be tall and beautiful like her. I know this much...your mom and dad love you already.
I love you so much and we just found out about you. I can't imagine how a lifetime will feel.
I know this much...God made me with a heart that loves children and desires fatherhood. God chose you for us. Nobody else on earth could have come together and made someone exactly like you and who you'll become. I can't wait to see you. I'm already happier knowing you'll be here soon. Because all I ever wanted was to be your dad."

Until tomorrow...

In the blink of an eye...

"In the Blink of an Eye it all changes...

With a kiss and a sigh love whispers your name.

It's here and gone...and life goes on...

Passin' like a ghost on the water"

My friend Rick Elias penned those words about 15 years ago or so. It's from a song called "Blink" on his album of the same name. Rick is nothing if not a prescient lyricist who seems to know what I have tried to say for most of my life. "Blink" is no exception.

I have been pondering my daughter and her life thus far. I have been preparing the Bible Study on godly womanhood as we've moved closer to her 14th birthday. We will celebrate her birthday in a special and emotional way this year. Often I've recommended Ed Tandy McGlasson's wonderful ministry here and on my radio show. Ed teaches about his method of pronouncing blessing and adulthood on all of his children as they reached a certain age. I am doing that with Morgan this year and leading into that is this study on the basic guidelines and definitions of godliness, particularly as it pertains to a young woman.

I am proud of my daughter more than even a verbose and wordy guy like me can express.

 God, knowing I would only have one child because of my divorce, sure gave me a special child to raise. I could not have designed her myself and done better. She is bright, funny, extremely caring, smarter than anyone I know, beautiful, gifted as an artist and possessing an amazing...amazing...singing voice. It has been such a pleasure being her daddy.

And yet it has come and gone so quickly.

It seems like she just got here. She was a tiny little thing, and I am a big man. I engulfed her the night she was born and she returned the favor in my heart. My daughter has been the fuel that restarted the fires that died in my soul when my world collapsed 5 years ago and she was the beacon I followed through 3 1/2 years of homelessness and doubt and shame and fear. I didn't know how things were going to get better but I knew they must because I had her. And because they must...by God they would. 

She has become an inquisitive, compassionate, God-loving young woman with a heart as big as the sky and a burning desire to honor Him with her life and her talents. In May she turns fourteen and I will pronounce my fatherly blessing on her and she'll begin her next phase as a young adult.

The years have flown by. Especially being divorced and not being there every night for every bedtime prayer or helping with every page of homework. I have three legal sized manila folders stuffed full of her drawings from the earliest days when she was scribbling on copy paper in my office, through the handmade Fathers Day cards and the pictures of our family...Me, Her, our two dogs and our cat...right up to the incredible current work that, along with her vocal abilities, got her into Nashville School of Arts.

It has come and gone...passing like a ghost on the water.

In four years she'll be approaching her 18th birthday and that fall she'll be leaving for Virginia and college at my Alma mater, Liberty University. Four more years of weekends and summers and sneaking to her school for lunch once in a while. It has been such a privilege and such a blessing and I am so much better a man for having been her dad.

And it has flown by so darned fast...

Dads...especially you divorced dads...make the most of this time. Stuff each day with a week. Make your kids collapse into bed at night so full of memories and happiness and so marked by your touch, that they smile when their head hits the pillow. Talk to them more than you talk to your buddies. Listen to their dreams and help them visualize them, and make the promise that you will do whatever you have to do to see those dreams come true. More than anything...tell them you love them. Tell them so much that they know when it's coming and they start to smile before the words leave your lips. My daughter tells me all the time that the one thing I've done that mattered most was consistently tell her I loved her. Having never heard those words even once from my father, I can assure you they mean everything to a kid.

Treasure every day and live each moment with them as if the only people on earth were your children. Because soon enough they'll be on their way...set in flight by their archer-dad who sees the target God intended them for and has been readying his arrows since the day they were born. The arrows bear the mark of the archer...build a fine arrow and leave a good mark, dads.

Remember...no matter what, you are their daddy. Divorce does not change that.

I am praying for you,

Craig

PS The show "DadMatters" will resume in two weeks with some changes and big announcements so stay tuned!