Father's Day

Today is Father's Day. It is Sunday. Service started at my church about 20 minutes ago. I am not there. I feel guilty. I feel like this is just one more area of life that I'm losing control over. At 1:30 AM, our dog stuck her nose in my face and woke me up. The last time she did that, I took it as an act of God to get me up. This time it was just frustrating and annoying. Why did she have to go out at that hour? As I walked through the house to the front door to put her out, I realized the kitchen smelled like food - recently cooked food. Coming back in, I saw the dirty dishes on the counter and sugar crystals left there by my (other)"sugar-hound's ice cream snack. One was still awake with lights on, the other in a dark room that smelled strongly of gum - lots of gum! After cleaning the kitchen, bringing the dog back in, telling the one to go to sleep and checking on the other, I found it difficult to fall back to sleep.

Is is just a sign of this phase in my kids' lives that they stay up half the night, sleep half the day, eat in their rooms and don't help with much of anything to keep the household going? Or is it a sign of how we are all pulling apart from one another and into ourselves? Probably some of both. But I feel like I'm losing all definition of "family" and all control over myself and my household.

I don't know how long I laid there. The next time I woke up and checked the clock it was 6AM. Too early to get up. I didn't want to get up. I wanted to sleep ... and dream. Back to sleep. Back to dreaming. I almost never can remember my dreams, and rarely even have the sense that I've been dreaming at all. The last few days, I'm sure that I've been dreaming ... life dreams full of people and activity and emotion ... but still can't remember any part of it. When I wake up and move through the day, though, I have the feeling that my "real" life was more "real" in my dreams, and that my waking "life" is really a "dream". Anyway, I fell back to sleep and dreaming.

The next time I woke up, it was after 9AM! Church starts at 10:00. Not enough time to get done all of the things I needed to to get my household "up" and running for the day, get myself and my youngest ready to leave and drive the 30 minute drive to church. Decision time. I could have made it (albeit a little late, as usual) by throwing clothes on, leaving all the morning "routine" for after church, and with a lot of pushing and dragging. But at least we'd be there (we won't be the next 2 or more Sundays anyway). Tom would have gone. He would have wanted us to go. I feel like we're all losing our commitment and self-discipline in our relationship with the Lord and our church families. Everyone has given so much to help and support us, I don't want to seem ungrateful. Then I remembered that it was also Father's Day.

There would most likely be a lot of talk on the radio in the car on the way to church about it. I'm sure there would be some "honoring" of the fathers present in church. Families would be together and celebrating their fathers. And my kids would be continually reminded that their father was not here today. Their father will never be here again. We haven't talked about it. I realized that I have the same feeling that I have when it is another holiday that we don't celebrate ... I want to just lay low, stay home and wait for it to pass. It hurts right now to think about how this day would have been (should have been) different!

I didn't wake my sons up. We didn't go to church. I'm sorry. We miss you terribly, honey! We wish you were here so we could say "Happy Father's Day! We love you!"