Waiver of Parental Rights
// August 31st, 2009 // 6 Comments » // My Confessions, My Life
I am thinking tonight about Abraham, walking up the hill to sacrifice his firstborn son, his only heir. These days God doesn’t just stop by for a visit and start up the conversation “I need you to make a sacrifice for me”, there are no stone altars, or rams caught in the thicket in the nick of time. There are lawyers and loafers, children and adults, men, and women, all in some way seeking their own interests. These days the issues are clouded and principals are less important. Being right, or winning, or out maneuvering your opponent is more important. These days if you do something wrong, just be sure you file the paperwork right and everything will be easy like butter. What you don’t say is more important than what you do say, and how you don’t say it is even more important! It is not doing the right thing but looking like you are doing the right thing while you are cashing out on someone else’s misfortune.
As I looked at the “waiver of parental rights” affidavit that old feeling came over me… the cold clammy fingers of fear and dread gripped over my heart squeezing it until my throat felt like I was swallowing a baseball. “It has come to this…” I breathed. There are really no words to express the feeling of being asked to sign a piece of paper that legally divorces you from your own child. The reality is that there are no words for these types of things at all… How horrible of a parent do you have to be for such a document to be necessary? Where is the rope that you grab to keep you from falling further down the nightmarish rabbit hole, where big is little and up is down? Perspective is all a matter of reality suddenly… the reality is that you have to make a choice… you have to think about “that which you would never willingly conceive of in your mind”… I am a man of reason, so how do you list your priorities and mark them off until you reach a reasonable decision? How… How do you even think about trying to choose?
The phone rings…he says it is what he wants, I will still be his dad… just not on paper.
I look at the paper… everyone says… fight! and win! God is for you! but the many years of seemingly good choices are dulled by a foggy perception…It is like looking back on a mine field where I stepped on every single mine and somehow survived. How can any choice be a good choice once you make the choice to walk through a minefield? I put my hand up to the past and turn away… “no” I cannot go there… others claim to remember it better than I do… and different… so different that I doubt myself… I wonder how my heart can be so sincere and yet so faulty… as faulty as my memory? The phone rings… he has questions… why I made choices… why I didn’t make others… I honestly don’t know… The questions are perfect and concise…. the type that don’t need answers… just delivery.
I sit… I sign. I sign the “waiver of parental rights” I go see a notary and look for the judgement on his face as he notarizes the “waiver of parental rights” I go to the post office and the postal worker drags the “waiver of parental rights” out of my resistant hand with a quizzical look. As the envelope leaves my hand my mind hears the deafening chorus of the abandoned as they scream at me of the fear of the unknown. I smile at the postal worker like a victim with a gun in his back as I swipe my card to pay the postage for the “waiver of parental rights”
The phone rings… people say… “you did the right thing” some of them are the same people that said “fight and win!” I think about all the times I have ignored the council of “Job’s Friends” thinking to have done the right thing, only to be found here apparently winning their approval… I value it little.. I value it less than little. I close my eyes to imagine a simpler time when life was catching toads and building forts.
(This post is a very real and honest post that describes the events surrounding the day that I actually did sign a “waiver of parental rights” for my first born son Collin James Carroll. My Ex-wife continues to actively read this blog and pass along my confessions that are meant for your encouragement as information that causes him to question my character and loyalty to him. My reasons for this post are not for the sake of drama, or sympathy, or counsel. I am simply hoping that through this post that you gain an insight and understanding possibly an empathy for those that are facing similar issues in life.)
Tags: Art, blog, choice, choices, dad, doing the right thing, dread, fear, friends, God, perception, perspective, sacrifice, sin, the past
