I recently was eating at a favored fast food place in town when I glanced to my right and recognized the face in the car beside me. I looked away quickly, and I felt my insides bristle with distaste. Normally a calm, understanding individual, the feelings that bubbled inside me were a shock to my senses.
I was bothered by his presence, angry at his inaction, and personally troubled by his inability to see the error of his ways.
Daddy, do you know what you’re doing?
The man I saw was the absentee father of a friend’s child, and though it was really none of my concern, it concerned me nonetheless.
He didn’t live hundreds of miles away. They weren’t separated by multiple state lines. He lived right there, in the same town as his continually growing child, yet he was like a ghost.
I didn’t know the intricacies of the circumstances, didn’t really want to know. I didn’t pretend to understand what was underneath the lack of motivation on his part to be involved. In fact, the only thing I did know was this. I knew what it felt like.
I knew all too well what it felt like to be a child abandoned by their father, given up in favor of no requirement to pay child support. But more painfully still; given up in favor of not having to be present for the hard times.
Being a parent isn’t easy. It comes with a bookoodle of responsibility. For some, it seems, it’s just easier to walk away. For reasons that blow my own mommy mind, it’s more comfortable for some parents to leave and never come back. To somehow pretend their parental rights never were.
But I wonder. Sometimes I wonder.
Daddy, do you know?
Do you know the hole you leave in your child’s heart?
Do you know the lasting pain you cause?
Do you know the crushed spirit, and the self-esteem issues your absence leaves in its wake?
Do you know you leave behind a child who wonders, was it me? Was it something I did, something that makes me unlovable? Not worth fighting for?
Daddy, did you know?
I chanced another glance at the wayward father in the fast food parking lot, and I wondered. I wondered if he had even a clue the damage his noninvolvement could be causing? I wondered if he knew.
Probably not.
Barbara Allen says
Thank you, Bree for this post. I pray that wayward father’s will read this & the Lord will use ir to pick their hearts so they will realize the moments & love that their child or children are missing but also the moments, joys & blessings that they, themselves, are missing. God bless you & yours.
brieann.rn@gmail.com says
Thank you.