We labor for the kind of house that makes it impossible for us to ever be home. We celebrate pregnancy long enough to leave them on others' door steps. In the name of our expensive education. We name them "boredom" or "unfulfilled."
And at the end of the day, when we are with them, they get the scraps of our time, attention and energy. We have our TV programs and electronic media. We buy them stuff to further orphan them. We sacrifice our kids for things, instead of things for our kids.
We are fathers of the fatherless. In absence of our love our daughters search for it artificially; we allow them to dress and act in certain ways as if we've forgotten what it was like as a teenage boy. To our sons we bequeath an image of "adult" that is anything but. No true north. No anchor. No fundamental sense of mission and purpose. To both we surrender important boundaries, expectations, follow-through easily to their push back, leaving them puppets to the world around them-- which reaffirms their lack of worth.
To all this we say, "they'll be ok" - an answer we wouldn't think of giving our boss about our work.
And we wonder... why they're disconnected. Confused. Angry. Misguided. Disrespectful. Rebellious. Selfish. Unkind. The truth is, they're imaging us. They are passing along us. They are our legacy... crying out for a kind of love they were designed to receive, for which we alone were uniquely designed to give. Your greatest and most sacred trust.
Let's live it.
