After The Work

It is often said about children “Enjoy them while they are young, because they grow up so fast.” During that time life seems to come at you full speed; work, childcare, projects can all build up and we blink. Often we are learning how to “be” adults, spending many an hour exhausted craving a nap along with the kids.

If you are like me, you were taught that the father’s contribution to the family is work, work, work. Careers can be chased after for our ambitions’ sake as well as providing a life for our families. The days of one income supporting the family is drawing to a close, moms entering the work place is the norm now.

It is so easy to fall into the notion that working at something is what the family needs most, when in reality we are not around to give our family what they really need. We love our children, we work so hard for them, only to lose the relationship you sought to support. Regret awaits in the wings 10 years later when we choose to sacrifice our family time.

As the song goes “And as I hung up the phone, it occurred to me He’d grown up just like me My boy was just like me”. No time for family, running in the rat race again and again. The legacy we give our kids is what we live each day, for better or for worse. The learn to value work and devalue their feelings. After all if dad doesn’t deal with them, must not be too important. Our children inherit what we teach them, for better and for worse.

Our children learn empathy and love elsewhere when we do not express to them love and demonstrate it with quality time. It is a bitter pill to swallow especially since we spent many an hour working for them.

Add into the mix our own personal problems. Stress can cause people to sink into addictive habits, be it shopping, video games, gambling, or even alcohol and drugs. Factor in our own hurts and one can come home from work only to isolate because we are hurting and do not know how to ask for help.

Why do we chase after career and ambition? Are we set to be wealthy? Or is it that you feel you have something to prove. Maybe show up the people you grew up with? Finally feel like mom or dad are proud? Perhaps a combination of all these things. Our ego’s protect deep seeded hurts and resentment, driving us to perfection all the while we cannot admit to ourselves we are going about it all wrong. Perhaps we cannot even see it until it is too late.

The problem of putting so much of our self esteem into our careers is that when the job takes a turn for the worse we are devastated. We feel as if we failed not just a job, but our families, our parents, or whomever else we seem to be living for.

I recall stepping down from my position in the church. I was having anxiety attacks all the while things seemed to be successful. Something was missing in the midst of the achievements. Changing careers at 40 is challenging, in my ego I felt I could easily find a second fulfilling career. I was spiritually dry and couldn’t hear God at the time, spent and burned out. Changing gears with a family at that age proved to be one of the most difficult times of my life.

We were in survival mode, we retreated to our own corners and didn’t come together in our suffering. I felt a desperation to provide and establish ourselves that was thus far unequaled. I was unraveling; childhood trauma’s, fear of failure, poverty, nothing seemed to work. I was learning about myself, why I needed to be right, why my biggest fear was failure, why I couldn’t let people inside.

In my pain, I was a coward and didn’t open up for help. Then came the drink and the pot, poor substitute medications for God’s presence. This only added to the chaos, feeling like I’d be better to the family dead than alive. So much of myself was wrapped up in my career as a pastor that I lost myself in the role, and consequently, lost my role as a husband and father.

It took six more years of spinning my wheels before I finally got truly sober, found my purpose again, and a foundational view of myself as a child of God. I had finally grown up. I wish I could say it was in time. I wish so deeply I could have learned these lessons 10 years ago. It would have saved so much pain and frustration.

I had my opportunities, but regrettably I chose isolation. The divide in the marriage got deeper and deeper until there was no desire to share our burdens. I had hurt her some many times with my ups and downs that hearts built calluses to protect themselves. We tried over and over to save our marriage, only to miss the mark one way or another. After a time a relationship can only take so many punches before we see throwing in the towel as a mercy and not a failure.

How could this not affect the kids? I was in denial, figuring they would be OK, that if we could just get a house, find the right job, have the right set of circumstances we would be finally be at peace. I cannot imagine what they have been through and the amount of strength they demonstrated is awe inspiring. Perhaps one day I’ll earn the right to hear what it was like for them so that I can do my part in the healing process.

Working so so hard for a legacy our children can depend upon and be proud of ends up producing a harvest of coldness and distance. Our kids learn to live life without us. Perhaps we were not consistent with our lives and the kids didn’t know which dad was coming home.

The hope is that we can grow spiritually mature, learning life’s lessons without driving everyone away. Marriages go from hot to cold, polite roommates teamed up for the kids. The children raised by mom and screens. It can feel like a mess.

It’s a mess we cannot blame on anyone but ourselves. The hope is that others can see things from our perspective, have some empathy and realize we were just doing our best. I recall learning that about my own parents, learning to live life on the fly as I grew along with them. Adults are young people growing up for the first time just like everyone else.

I often weep now when I reflect upon all of this. They are tears of grief and healing, accepting my role in their pain and the realization that I fell far short of what goals I had as a father. The Lord is at work with spiritual surgery, but the wound is sore and deep. It is learning a new way to surrender and depend upon Him for the future. Honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness are essential in accepting my new reality; or at least embrace the reality I had been avoiding.

There is no need to run anymore, no reason to give up when we operate out of love as God calls us to. Such a love is humble enough to empathize with them, admit my faults, and live in the hope that healing can take place. Joel 2:25-26 offer hope:

“I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten—
    the great locust and the young locust,
    the other locusts and the locust swarm—
my great army that I sent among you.
²⁶ You will have plenty to eat, until you are full,
    and you will praise the name of the Lord your God,
    who has worked wonders for you;
never again will my people be shamed.”

Once Israel saw the truth and turned to the LORD does God promise to restore. He will take everything that stands in the way of himself and us, destroy every arrogant motive, take away every idol in our lives. Being rescued by God can be painful, but better to learn through said pain to be with God in a deeper way, to be truly saved from ourselves. The beautiful axioms of the gospel become even more clear: “humble thyself and you shall be exulted” and “We must lose our lives to save them”. The depth that which we repent is proportional to the heights we can climb.

It is both an exciting and a terrifying reality to depend upon the Lord for our every need in the moment. To believe God will provide for our finances, our families, and our relationships is a quantum leap forward from the arrogance that we can arrange and move life to accommodate us. Today the twin lessons ring true for me: “To thine own self be true” and “Live today on life’s terms”.