2002-04-18 - 8:32 p.m.

Heartbreak

Went into work earlier than usual last nite. Had gone to Bible study and didn't go back to bed after, just visited with 2d for a while, then left for work 20 minutes early. It was a prep night and the girls from the previous shift were just finishing their cleaning.

They gathered around the conference table where I was sitting, and as is my usual custom, I just started quietly nosing into their lives. What a heartbreak! Most are in their 20's, and that shift is known as a party shift often going by the bars on the way home from work. Most are either living with guys, divorced, or in the middle of one.

W is married, but divorcing, to a former student's big brother. She has 4 or 5 kids, one of which is his, but the baby is not. I didn't think she was even married since last week she was talking about a new guy she had met. The current guy and she are still together but getting ready to end it. she was complaining that his priority is just not the kids. No feeling at all that only one is his and not even the most recent. He had bought a Cd player for his truck when he knew her little girl was growing and needed a bigger size of pants!

One wonders what women think there is for a man in these new relationships. They are not home anymore, preparing meals, quieting kids, making a cozy retreat. They keep pumping out kids that they have no intention of nurturing, usually not from the same father but the current guy is supposed to take active interest and donate the paycheck to sustaining this lifesyle. I suppose the male half has just as many cockeyed ideas but I usually don't hear them.

Marriage and family classes are badly needed but I don't know who would teach them. The blind leading the blind. Your Word was the guide for a long time. Proverb's virtuous woman was a good rolemodel, and Paul's guidelines were good for both partners. The role of the older woman in churches was to provide example and instructions but once the demarcation between generations became so great, that went by the wayside.

I was totally ignorant of much of the details that went into the care of a family because of my own past situation, but watching the sister-in-laws and my mother-in-law was a quiet education. Naturally I quietly resented them but I did watch and I did learn.

The destruction of the family is the destruction of the culture and eventually the destruction of the nation. No wonder the end will so surely come. You alone can see the end from the beginning. Even as You set our guidelines, You knew where our willfulness would take us, the need for a Saviour, and the need to wrap it all up one day. Thank You.

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