Heartache

I need to write.  I need to get my thoughts out.  Maybe this should be a private journal-type post, and maybe this is too personal to share.  I don't know.  I just need to write.

I got an email today from a dear friend.  As with many of my dear friends, she is someone I met online and have never met in person.  We met about 8.5 years ago on a message board for people whose babies wouldn't sleep.  We were a group following the principles of the book The No Cry Sleep Solution.  Our babies are now 9 and they both sleep.  :)

That is simply background.  Suffice it to say, over the years we have gotten to know each other better and know more than just each other's children's sleep habits.  She knows the situations my family has been through and we share a common faith.  She doesn't know (well, she does now, because I know she reads my blog) that her email made me cry.  It touched on something that is one of my deepest aches when it comes to my children and their lack of a good father in their daily lives.  Male role models for my children.  Men, GOOD men, who will step in the gap and BE godly father-like men to my children, but especially my boys.  I cannot show them, by my life, how to be a man.  Because I'm not one.

I pray and pray and pray for God to send these men.  I talk to people.  I give out hints to friends whose husbands are good fathers to their children, but still, no one reaches out.  My children have their grandpa, and he is wonderful, and godly, but he cannot be as physically active as they need.  And sometimes it is hard for them to connect.

I don't want any man to feel forced to spend time with my sons.  And I shy away from organizations like Boy Scouts or Big Brothers.  Too many unknowns.  Too many things I'm uncomfortable with.

I worry for Ethan.  Ethan does not reach out to adults.  If you want to really know Ethan, you have to work very hard.  You have to reach out and find what interests him.  I can't put my finger on it, but there is a certain way you must listen and respond to Ethan, and it isn't easy.  He will not sit and have an open conversation with an adult.  It has to be built over long periods of time and a concerted effort to spend one on one time with him.  No adult in his life (apart from me) has the time to do that.  The only adults I've ever seen Ethan 100% himself with have been me and his dad.  In his whole life.

Silas is absolutely comfortable talking with adults.  He seems to have more difficulty with children his own age.  But adults are easy.  And he has endeared himself to many teachers and friends of our family.  Most are women.

And so, tonight, I lament the lack of good men to fill the gap.  Where are they?  God knows I've prayed for them.  Or one.  Oh Lord, who will you send to show my boys YOU?  To show them a true father?  I am NOT asking for a husband.  I am simply asking for men to fill the gap, the giant, gaping crater of a gap their foolish father left.  And really, when it comes right down to it, he was doing a pretty crap job showing them what a true, godly father is, anyway.

So, what do I do?  I know that boys can grow to be awesome men without fathers, when other men step in and show them what awesome men are.  I have approached people with this concern.  I have mentioned to friends that it would be great if their husbands are doing something with their sons, if they could maybe invite my boys along.  It hasn't happened.  Maybe these aren't the right men, but what else can a mother do?  I feel lost.  I feel hopeless.  It's too much to ask.  It's too much to ask for a man to put forth the kind of effort needed (especially with Ethan).  Who has the time?   These men have their own families.  Their own sons.  This is a job that would take hours and hours and days and weeks and months of relationship-building.  Who would do that?  It's not just something that takes a couple of hours on an afternoon.  This is serious stuff!  Why can't anyone see how serious this is?!?  

Lord, why hasn't this prayer been answered?  This isn't for me!  This is for my boys.  My boys, who I am desperate to see grow into GOOD men.  Godly men.  Men with integrity.  Men who will NOT emulate their biological father.

My boys need this!