I waited to get married and have a child until I was in my late thirties. Looking back, I think I was looking for my first real love. After twelve years, God brought us back together again. Looking back, I have to credit God with changing my personality, making me appreciate the girl I once let slip away. When we got back together, I vowed, to her and to God, to be the best husband and father I could possibly be. He had changed me quite a bit! I guess I succeeded pretty well, too, because later, she described me as a good husband, and an excellent father. Two years into the marriage, we were blessed with a beautiful baby girl. A miracle child. Her mother was having a difficult time in the latter months of the pregnancy, and the doctors decided to start the delivery with an injection of Pitucin. I was able to be there in the delivery room, and thanked God again, for a healthy baby and mother. A month later, God used this miracle baby to get me to stop smoking, probably saving my life. I think he had a plan. Not one that I appreciated at first, however.
When I lost my job, my wife filed for divorce. No money, no marriage, she said. My daughter was five years old. A real Daddy's Girl, followed me everywhere, thought I was the greatest fixer, the best singer, the strongest man in town. I liked HER a lot, too! Like the song says, she was the end of my rainbow, my pot of gold, the spirit of Christmas, my star on the tree. The Easter Bunny to Mommy and Me. A precious gem, daddy's bright and shining star. Sugar and Spice and everything nice, she was Daddy's Little Girl. I think most fathers out there would admit to feeling the same way about their kids. But that didn't sway the divorce court judge. Even though my wife admitted her adultery, and praised me as an excellent father, the judge awarded her custody. I got visitation twice a month. Oh, yes, and a bill for child support.
I quickly learned that my role as a father was limited to signing that child support check. It's the only value most courts find in fatherhood. The mother would withhold visitation, but the court didn't care. My daughter could be endangered, but the courts didn't care. I filed complaints, argued in court, but the judge didn't care. The politically correct decision was to give custody to the mother, and make the father support them both. I quickly realized how unfair it all was, especially to the children. It was supposed to be a great social experiment, but it was terribly damaging to the children. The scientific evidence was there, but the courts didn't care. Judges are political animals, and they do what's politically correct. The greatest role of a father is to protect his children. To do that, I had to work to change the system.
Looking back, I can see God's hand in my earlier life. He knew what I was going to be going through. When I was in college, I had to take public speaking courses. I learned to type. Literature courses, which I loved, involved reams of written work, which I hated. I had to provide research papers for my Psychology courses, and learned to analyze other peoples findings. I learned statistics, and how to find the truth when people lied with numbers. I had to take hard sciences, and learned the objective method. God helped me overcome an aversion to math, and that gave me another analytical tool. He even got me up on a stage in community theatre, and gave me the courage to sing solo. There were times when I cursed all that work and the need to learn things I dreaded doing. I thought at the time that most of that was useless. God works in mysterious ways, though. When the judge took away my daughter, he made me mad enough to fight back. It was then that I found that God had given me the weapons I would need to fight with.
My singing experience took away all traces of shyness, so I could stand in front of an audience and make speeches. The public speaking courses I used to dread, taught me how to speak. The literature courses gave me a way with words. The statistics I hated, and the research reviews I was forced to do, were now exceptionally useful in debunking anti-family research. The typing I had to learn came in handy for a thousand letters to the editor, and commentaries that were printed in several international journals. God knows my limits, however, so he tossed in a few rewards along the way. He let me write poetry, still on subject, but more personally rewarding to see published. I was inspired to write song lyrics. On at least two occasions, God, or one of his agents, gave me words to write while I slept. I awoke with a fully framed story several times, stories which not only carried the message, but brought great personal rewards.
I've known for a long time now, that God works in mysterious ways. He sure did in my case. The fight against political correctness in divorce and custody is hardly over, but I've been given an opportunity to fight the good fight.
On the one hand, losing my daughter was the most awful thing that ever happened to me, but on the other hand, it motivated me to utilize the gifts God had given me. When I recall that God gave us his only Son, and that he told Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, and caused Job to lose his children, I'm forced to realize that the loss of my daughter may have been a sacrifice I had to make for the greater good. Like many others, I would have been, indeed was, reluctant to join the fight, until I was personally involved. Still, losing my daughter to divorce was, and still is, terribly painful. For awhile, when we still visited, it was like having her die every other week. Over and over again. I still cry when I think of her, but I'm grateful to God for giving me the perception and the strength to accept His will. I'm grateful too, in spite of the pain, for the gift of fatherhood. Thank you God. Even though it was a short run, I wouldn't have missed it for the world.
