Handling the Hurt

The grief I held in and hid from the kids all those months spilled out while they sat with me on the floor the day their daddy left.  Seeing me hurt and broken probably added to the pain they already felt from his leaving, and I hated that.  I didn’t want them to hurt, but I also didn’t want to teach them to ignore or internalize their feelings.  I knew we all had to work through the hurt to heal from it.  As their momma, I took on new layers of pain as I witnessed theirs and tried to validate and help them through it.  That looked different for each child.  At different ages and with different personalities, each of my boys expressed their hurt in different ways. 

The baby boy – then six – longed for his daddy.  He would randomly and often come to me and say, “Momma, I miss Daddy.”  I’d hug him tight and reply, “Me too, buddy.”  He would worry about his daddy being alone.  When my husband came back a few days after he left to get some things, that sweet boy had a stuffed animal waiting to send with his daddy so that he wouldn’t have to sleep alone.  What beautiful innocence and love.  

He would say matter-of-factly the way he understood things to be — Daddy liked someone else more than Mommy, but he didn’t understand how that violated the marriage.  One day I was at the washer loading clothes when he came up behind me.  “Momma? Who are you gonna marry now?”  Thank goodness my back was to him, so he didn’t see the hurt puddle up in my eyes.  I already felt like I’d been used up and traded in for something new.  I absolutely didn’t want my child thinking that’s how marriage was supposed to be.  

The ten year old understood from growing up in church that his daddy had committed adultery.  While we were still sitting in the floor that day, he expressed his sadness that his daddy had broken one of the Ten Commandments.  He was truly heartbroken by the sin even if he didn’t fully grasp what adultery meant.  He would talk to their counselor or me about his concerns for his daddy, but I think there were many times he kept them to himself and tried to figure things out.  I would find him sitting in my bed with a Bible, reading scripture.  Or sitting on the side of the bed staring at either our oversized wedding picture framed on the wall or the 5×7 one on the nightstand of us sitting on a pier in Florida – me smiling while my husband sported a goofy face, likely having said something sarcastic that made me laugh.  Sometimes I’d walk by the front entryway and find my son there looking at the various family photos.  I’d stand with him and take them in.  I imagine he was probably wondering the same as me: What happened? When did things change?  

They all had questions.  Some that I knew how to answer.  Some that I didn’t.  I tried to answer with age-appropriate truth and a load of compassion.  Sometimes, all I could do was hold them and hope my hugs gave them as much comfort as theirs did me.  

When our former bedtime routine hurt too much, I led them in a new one.  We would read a Psalm together each night. I would point out it’s promises and that even when the Psalmist felt sad, discouraged, angry, or afraid, he would express that then turn his thoughts back to praise.  I told them it was ok to let God know when we weren’t happy, but that no matter how bad things were, we should always find something to be thankful for.  I’d have each of them share something from that day that we could thank God for, then I would pray the scripture promises from the Psalm we’d read and thank God for the things they’d listed.  Some nights things went ok.  Some nights were rough.  Some nights the younger two would need to be near me and share my king size bed.  Sometimes my oldest would come to me to talk. 

At fourteen, he had the best understanding of what his dad had done to hurt me, but he struggled with how his dad was able to do it or why God had allowed it.  The day my husband told our son that he planned to leave, my son shook, I imagine, with some combination of anger and hurt.  He said very little except, “She’s about to have another baby!”  It baffled and hurt him that that didn’t seem to matter.  He seemed to feel responsibility no fourteen year old kid should feel, no matter how often I told him that it wasn’t his job and that I would take care of us.  I was so very proud of him for being such a thoughtful, responsible kid, but I just wanted him to feel like a kid.  

He worried about every member of the family, including his dad.  He had so much love and heartache, but it manifested as anger sometimes.  He didn’t want to talk about it, and I didn’t want his beautiful soul to change to something ugly from holding it in.  I struggled most with how to help him.  I knew that his actions were normal for a teenage boy whose life had become something his parents promised it never would.  When he was a little boy, maybe in second grade, he came home from school asking us about divorce because one of his friends’ parents were getting divorced.  I can still hear my husband telling him that he would never have to worry about that because it wasn’t an option for us.  

One of the things my son would talk to me about was the many times his dad had said divorce was not on the menu.  He recalled a sermon illustration about how you don’t go to Burger King and ask for a Big Mac because it’s not on the menu and that you have to determine in your marriage that when hard times come, divorce is not even a consideration because it’s not on the menu.  My son fully believed everything his dad said to that point – from the time he was a little boy whose friend was going through a hard time to his early teen years, sitting in Sunday service as a youth hearing a message from the pulpit.  I think part of his pain – like mine – was because everything that happened went against everything we trusted and thought we knew.  

His dad was a man who had been very present and involved, and though he still saw them some and called at night, it wasn’t the same as being home.  He was the wrestling partner, the video game opponent, sports teacher, Star Wars and Superhero expert, and so much more that I just wasn’t.  Even if I could have wrestled at 8 to 9 months pregnant or learned how to work the game controllers or talk sports, Star Wars, or Marvel versus DC, I was not ever going to be their father.  Even if I gave my all to be the best single Mom I could be, it would never replace having a father in the home.  

This seemed especially true for my unborn baby girl.  My childhood years were without a father in the home.  I knew what she would be missing.  My heart broke for her not experiencing what the boys had to that point: her daddy driving us home from the hospital and proudly taking her into our home for the first time, raising her with me from newborn night-time feedings on up, hearing his voice in the middle of the night or the rhythm of his heartbeat as she fell asleep on his chest.  It also broke for what she would need from a father that I couldn’t do alone, like demonstrating how men should treat women and how she should one day be loved as Christ loves the Church.  I would do my best to tell her that and hoped her brothers would show her, but I wanted so badly for her to see it lived out daily in our home between her Daddy and me. 

In time, I came to realize that if our marriage was not going to be that example for the kids, then the best I could do was to teach them that God is the only unfailing Father and Christ the only flawless husband to His bride.  Humanity as a whole has been flawed since the Garden and needs grace.  I tried to demonstrate and guide them to act in grace, despite the hurt.  There have been and will likely always be things that I am unskilled to teach my children, but if they grasp grace, then I will have accomplished much.