Father's Day is bittersweet

What do you put as your status update on facebook, on a day when everyone is putting up posts about how wonderful their fathers are?

How am I supposed to feel when my own father hasn't bothered to try?
When my biggest memories of 'dear old dad' relate to the amount of alcohol he consumed?
When the last words my dad ever penned to me were harsh words of slander and belittling, after my husband and I had tried to reach out and reconcile a relationship gone wrong a few months after the birth of my firstborn?

Joshua will be 7 tomorrow.  He was born on Father's Day 2004.
The last time we saw my father was at Thanksgiving 2004 - Joshua was not quite 4 months old.

My dad has never met my three youngest children.  They are asking tougher questions as they years add up.  Why don't we see him?  Why doesn't he like us?  What did he say that made you so sad?  Why won't he talk to you?

I am thankful...
...thankful for a little family comprised of my husband and four beautiful children.  Our life isn't perfect, my marriage isn't perfect, but we are committed to becoming better and stronger daily.
...thankful for friends who fill those gaps left by uncaring and disinterested relatives.
...thankful that even though my in-laws drive me up the wall sometimes (and I have to keep my distance emotionally a lot of the time), that they are still good grandparents and love my kids to death.
...thankful for the examples of great dads around me...investing daily in their relationships with their children and being intentional in teaching and loving them.

...and, most of all, thankful for a Heavenly Father who promised me in His Word:

...that He would never leave me nor forsake me... 

...that He would not leave me comfortless or as an orphan... 

...that He would uphold me with the righteousness of His right hand... 

...that He would give me the desires of my heart if I commit my ways to Him... 

...that if I wait on Him, that He would renew my strength... 

...that He delights in me and sings over me, and that He is mighty to save... 

...that He who began a good work in me would be faithful to complete it...

...that He loves me.

I am a teetotaler, too

I had no idea what a teetotaler was, until the other day.

Admittedly, I've been in a blogging slump, bigtime.  Call it trying to rearrange my life, reorganize and make things more efficient on a day to day basis before this baby makes his/her arrival... call it dealing with relationship fallouts... call it wrestling with other issues.  Call it whatever you want... but blogging has not been coming easy.  I have an abundance of unposted drafts waiting to be edited and dumped into the blogosphere, but there they still wait.

However, when Paige posted this the other day, it struck a chord with me.  A very, very big chord.  And it was the fuel I needed to write a *real* post again.  It's not nearly as eloquent or to the point as Paige's is... maybe a little rougher.

I, too, am a teetotaler.  I didn't think there were many of us out there.

I could easily echo much of what she's written.  My stance is *not* one of me being holier-than-thou.  I have many, many friends - both Christian and non-Christian - who enjoy a glass of wine or other beverage, and I am not accustomed to tearing them down or spending less time with them because they *do* drink once in a while.  I never want to come across as thinking I am better than them because they drink and I don't.  Truthfully, I likely have other vices that could be pointed at and looked down upon as unworthy or inferior.  But that's not what my friendships are about.  I still love even those friends who do drink occasionally.

Probably my absolute biggest reason for not ever touching the stuff is this:  I grew up in an alcoholic home.  My dad was a drunk, my mom drank (though not to nearly the same degree as my dad).  My dad would easily drink 20 out of 24 beers in a flat in a single night.  Then he'd pile a 26 oz bottle of whiskey on top of that.  Every single night.  I remember getting hauled across the house by my earlobe because I didn't get my dad a beer fast enough one night.  I have always, always hated alcohol.  My mom and I saved receipts for 6 months from all the booze he bought - $9000 in that six month period.  This was before it got *really* bad.

No wonder I had to wear the same hole-ridden jeans to school for a week straight.  I can't imagine what an extra $18,000 per year might have done for our otherwise poverty-stricken family.

Alcoholism can run in families.  Seeing what it did to my dad was enough for me.  I never *ever* want to put myself in a position of compromise, opening my mind and body to the addicting effects of alcohol.  It turned my dad into an abusive, controlling, and manipulative man.  He was never a "happy drunk".  As a daughter of a drunk, and with the possible inherited tendencies towards addiction to alcohol, I don't want to even give it a chance.

I do have other reasons, too, for not ever wanting to drink, though that is the biggest one.

While I was ridiculed in high school for never having imbibed, I've never really felt the pressure.  I have, however, had days where I've said to Graeme, "Hmm, if I was a drinking woman, I'd reach for something right now..." or, "I can see why people drink to numb the chaos or dull the pain..."  But I have never actually been tempted to give in.  I'd rather press into more productive pursuits.

Yes, Jesus changed water into wine.  That's a tough one for me to reconcile.  Because of this, I won't ever be able to say to someone, "Drinking is a sin," or anything to that effect.  Giving oneself to drunkenness is, though, is another matter... but didn't He make that choicest wine at the end of the wedding feast, when everyone was already inebriated?

I personally feel that I have enough trouble controlling my emotions sometimes; why would I add something to the mix where I would be even less inhibited?  Why would I put myself in a position of compromise?

Now, this I say carefully - I do have a problem with those who call themselves Christians but then turn around and conform to the pattern of the world by proclaiming how much they're looking forward to going to the pub with their friends... or how much they will *need* that glass (or bottle!) of wine at the end of the day to unwind... how can we set ourselves apart from the world if we're not willing to exercise a little discretion when it comes to addictive substances?  (This is merely the God-following side of the argument...)

This much can be said:  alcohol is not the only potential problem... food, cigarettes, exercise, even hobbies! - can become such an addiction that it numbs us to the needs around us.  God knows that I need as much balance in my life as I wrestle with how to make everything that He wants me to do and learn, fit properly together.

(And no, I don't smoke either!  Ha ha!)

Treading carefully

I say what I am about to say with great care and respect...

I took the boys to a special indoor playground today, one where you have to pay admission to get in.  Not a big deal; the owner goes to my church and her hsuband plays bass on my worship team.

When I got there, there were no less than 60 children in blue shirts and about 20 adults in the same shirt... all from the same day care.

Sixty children.
One day care.

There were little boys peeing their pants, one worker passing off the child to another and saying, "Here, you need to take him to the bathroom and make him empty out."

There was an assembly-line of diaper-changing duty... one woman would take two children at a time, names written on diapers in permanent marker, to do the duty.  She would return where another woman would herd the next two children towards the first.

There were workers sitting in huddles, not even looking at the children or caring that one of their charges was about to jump on my baby (I did a mid-air catch today).

And there were abundant tears of overtired little sweeties.  As they were about to leave, the head lady told the older kids that they were going to sit with a toddler on the bus and that their job was to keep the toddler awake until they got back to the day care, and if they succeeded, they would get a chocolate bar after lunch.

I was sad for these little ones.

Two final thoughts:

I suppose a lot of home-schoolers could look the same way at mothers who choose to formal-school their children... believe me, I wrestle with this one a lot...

...and I hope I am never in a position of *needing* to work outside the home and send my littles to daycare.

Change of heart

Here is today's promised post about why we changed our minds about trick-or-treating, or even dressing up.

The long and short of it is this: we were not comfortable ostracizing ourselves in our brand new community by being the ONLY house with our lights off.

I know it's not about what's comfortable, and I certainly wasn't 'for' the T&T-ing... still am not, really!

However, the conclusion I did come to was this: we are in a new neighborhood, all the families have really young children, and it was a really neat opportunity to socialize with a lot of the other families on our crescent; families that we would not normally chat with on a day-to-day basis.

I think we'll probably evaluate this one every year, actually. For this year, we 'gave in'. We connected with our neighbors in a new and fun way; nobody was dressed up as a witch or a devil. Rather, our step was visited by many princesses, lions, a cow, some Star Wars little guys, a Pooh bear and two Tiggers, and even a banana. We got to meet a lot more of the parents from the other end of the crescent. We even discovered that a guy that Graeme used to work with at the PCN also lives on our street - about 10 houses down!

We didn't want to ostracize ourselves. Our closer neighbors know where we stand with going to church and even with drinking (having been offered but politely refusing), and it's OK. If we totally separated ourselves for this one night, we would completely have sent the message that "we're too good for you", just based on what we know of our neighbors. We want to keep communication and connection open, not shut it down. Right now, it's about developing - not squelching - those relationships... opening doors to curious people... windows of opportunity to more freely and credibly share the Gospel...

For this year, it's OK. The boys had fun, no one had spooky dreams, and they go to chat with a lot of their little friends along the way. We have way too much candy in the house, but Mama gets to dole it out, and the boys know that they don't just get to have some whenever they want.

We were glad we made the decision we did. No evil lurked on Summercourt Terrace this year. We also educate our boys on why certain aspects of Hallowe'en are evil. I guess it's sort of like Christmas - we still 'do' certain parts of the secular world of Christmas, but caution the boys on the materialism and such. (And yes, we do let them believe in Santa.) We tend to balance that well, we think, with talking about how God would have us share Him in the situations we're in, and then act accordingly.

So there you have it.

(The other guy in the pictures is Tim, and his little Super Lion, Hudson. We also went to Gramma & Grampa's for a quick visit; Meaghan changed into a poodle costume since she couldn't go in her carseat with her mermaid costume on!)

Wordless Wednesday

...thoughts to go with this post, tomorrow. 'Cuz I bet you're wondering what changed our minds...

Grief

Sometimes we grieve...

...and yet have a hard time putting our finger on the reason.

Then we figure it out, and we want to put words to it...

...but yet we can't let the monster out of the closet.

We long to be understood...

...but fear for judgement and condemnation.

We yearn for peace...

...but there is no peace... only a bandaid.

We ache for restoration...

...but aren't sure if it will ever come.

How long, O Lord, how long?

Oh God, reach in... heal... restore... as only You can do...