Kids need moms and dads

By MARY JANE HOLT
Contributing Writer

He was only 7 years old when it happened. Now he's 40.

Thirty-three years ago he was sure he could have done something to prevent it. He knew it was his fault. That he could have stopped his parents from divorcing, if he'd just tried a little harder.

Today, he knows better, but the guilt still plagues him. False guilt, but real to the heart that broke so long ago.

I hear it all too often and it breaks my heart. The pain just doesn't go away. Unsettledness. Incompleteness. Insecurity. Fear that it could happen again is ever present for children from broken homes.

We don't like the term "broken homes" do we? But that's what they are. Broken families. Broken lives. Broken hearts.

God forbid that I be the judge of who should and should not stay together in marriage. Heaven knows if it were not for grace and divine guidance, my own marriage could have crumbled on more than one occasion. So don't think I'm sitting on some kind of high horse today telling folks not to get a divorce.

It's not a high horse at all. It's more like a toy pony that comes into play, the one in your kid's room that will have to go to Mom's house, or Dad's, when the moving takes place. Of course, that may be an easy decision for a child, compared to deciding where his heart will go. Then again, it's broken. So I reckon one half could go with Mom and the other with Dad.

Thus the incompleteness settles in for life. Too many times it doesn't have to be that way. What is it with us? Has everything become too fast and convenient? Is commitment gone forever? Staying power just does not exist anymore, does it?

I don't get it. And the kids don't deserve it.

I have friends who are divorced and in second and third marriages. They know I do not judge them. That I care about their health and happiness. Too many were in situations where abuse was too common and they felt they had no choice. In some cases, their actual physical survival was at stake.

But nothing erases the fact that kids from broken homes are scarred for life. Face it, folks. If your marriage is on the rocks, do what you can to get it back on solid ground. Don't just walk away because it has become so easy to do that in America. If you do, you are giving your kids permission to do the same. To walk away from loved ones, jobs, commitments of all kinds.

By the way, there's a new book hot off Waldman House Press called "Reading With Dad." Written by Richard Jorgensen and illustrated by Warren Hanson, it begins: "We're there in the photo that hangs on the wall, the first childhood memory I can recall... The three of us snug in the overstuffed chair, (well, two - it just seems like the third one was there) The Cat In The Hat, my father and I. It's just before bed and I'm warm and dry."

It's a precious book. Takes you through the little girl's life. A little girl who always had a dad. A dad who always had a daughter. Security. They were there for one another.

David Crary wrote an article, published last week by The Associated Press, in which he reported that nearly 700,000 fathers are presently in state and federal prisons. He spoke of inmates at Missouri's toughest prison who run a 4-H Club program for their children. Imprisoned dads in Florida, some barely literate, send home recordings of themselves reading storybooks.

Pennsylvania has expanded a program called Long Distance Dads throughout its prison system, and several Southern states are preparing comparable initiatives, he said.

Given facts like that, the divorce rate being what it is, and the number of single moms who never marry, it's scary. Kids need two parents. For a thousand and one reasons, kids need mom and dad. But I'll hush for today.

On another note, you might want to mark your calendars for a special singing at The Gospel Barn in LaGrange Thursday, Nov. 9, with proceeds going to The Southern Gospel Music Hall of Fame. Appearing will be Tony Gore and Majesty, The Dove Brothers, and Karen Peck and New River. Call 800-844-6737 for information.

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