I'm Still Here

A week of Children's Aid, depression, money problems, a $77 mistake, a job interview, and reminders that progress can happen in the middle of the mess.

There are weeks when life doesn't just knock you down.

It keeps finding new ways to make sure you stay there.

This was one of those weeks.

On Monday, I walked into a meeting with Children's Aid hoping to find out more about how I could see my kids. I walked out feeling like I had been handed another reason to wonder whether maybe my kids would be better off without me.

By the end of the week, I was still dealing with the fallout from that meeting. I wasn't sleeping well. Money was a mess. My job was wearing me down. My bike was still out of service. I made a mistake at work that could cost me the job I already don't want to be in. I was questioning where God was in all of this.

And I was hurting.

Badly.

But somewhere in the middle of all of that, there were also people who showed up, small things that went right, and one relationship that has changed more than I sometimes remember to appreciate.

So this is where I am right now.

Monday Broke Me

I went into the Children's Aid meeting expecting supervised visits with my older two children. I was hoping they might be willing to do something similar with my younger two.

I got one of those things.

I was told I will have supervised visits with my older two.

But they haven't happened yet.

There is still no date or schedule. They have to work out the timing around my kids' availability, staffing and facility availability, and my own availability. Based on my conversations with my kids, I don't think there has been any real movement on that yet.

There is no provision for me to see my younger two right now. I haven't seen them since just before Christmas.

They also gave me the results of their investigation into my ex-wife. Much of it wasn't surprising, but there were some things that were.

They found substantial risk of physical abuse involving all four of my children. They found substantial risk of neglect involving all four. They found an imminent risk of family separation involving my older two, which wasn't exactly surprising considering they had already been removed.

What surprised me was what wasn't there.

There was no finding of emotional abuse.

I honestly don't know what to make of that.

Maybe there is something about the investigation or their definitions that I don't understand. I'm not going to pretend I know enough about their process to argue every finding point by point.

But as a father who has watched what my children have gone through, I struggle to understand how physical abuse and neglect can be considered substantial risks while emotional abuse isn't considered a concern.

And that was part of what left me feeling like Children's Aid had already decided where I belonged in this story.

I know that's my perception.

I also know perception isn't necessarily the same thing as fact.

But after that meeting, that's how it felt.

Then I found out they had been investigating me, too.

Based on the incident from my past in the United States, I was given a label that was extremely difficult to hear.

Was I surprised?

No.

Was I hurt?

Absolutely.

I have spent a lot of time trying to move forward from my past. I know I have done things that I am not proud of. I know there are parts of me that still need serious work.

I also don't want to spend the rest of my life arguing about whether I'm a good person or a bad person.

I want to heal.

I want to deal with the things inside me that have caused problems instead of spending the rest of my life explaining them.

I want to take responsibility for my problems and for what I do about them.

But I also believe there is a difference between owning what I have done and believing that the worst things I've ever done are the entirety of who I am.

That distinction matters to me.

Especially now.

I Felt Trapped

There was another part of that meeting that I haven't been able to shake.

The investigator and my kid's social worker sat across from each other, toward the front of the room, between me and the door. I was sitting at the end of the table with my back against a wall.

That probably sounds like an insignificant detail.

It wasn't to me.

I was extremely anxious going into that meeting. Sitting there, I could feel my heart racing. I felt trapped. My experience in prison has left me with a strong reaction when I feel like I have no way out of a situation, and sitting there with my back against the wall brought some of that feeling back.

The social worker and the investigator also couldn't have felt more different to me.

The social worker wasn't exactly friendly, but she wasn't openly hostile either. She was difficult to read, but I could accept that.

The investigator felt different.

I felt a coldness from her that I couldn't shake. I felt like the interaction was more personal than I expected it to be.

I don't know what was going on in her head.

I only know how it felt sitting across from her.

And to me, it felt like this had become more than a routine administrative process.

I left that meeting in a very dark place.

I Was Suicidal Again

I need to be honest about this.

I was suicidal again.

I was questioning whether my kids would be better off without me.

I hated myself.

I hated where my life was.

And for a while, I genuinely didn't know how I was supposed to keep carrying all of this.

What made it worse was how alone I felt.

I have a support system. I know that. There are people who care about me.

But caring about somebody and being able to understand what they are actually going through are two different things.

There is a strange kind of loneliness that comes from knowing people care about you, but knowing they can't really understand what you're carrying.

I called my best friend. He listened, but I don't think he really understands what this feels like. I don't blame him. It's an enormous thing to ask somebody to understand from the outside.

I called the director of the ministry that runs the home where I live. He talked me down a bit.

I called the director of Whitestone. He encouraged me and tried to help me get through the night.

Then I called a relatively new leader from Whitestone.

He dropped what he was doing and came to see me.

I didn't expect that.

He didn't mince words. He didn't tell me everything was going to be okay.

He told me to keep trusting that God would make things right.

Maybe not in my timing.

That was hard to hear.

But it was probably what I needed to hear.

Nobody could fix this for me.

Nobody could undo the CAS meeting.

Nobody could make my kids suddenly come home.

Nobody could solve my financial problems.

Nobody could give me a new job that night.

But somebody showed up.

That mattered.

I Kept Showing Up Too

Tuesday was Whitestone.

I look forward to Whitestone most weeks, and this week was no exception.

There was a guest speaker that night, and his story hit me hard.

He had been abused as a child. He had struggled with many of the same things I have struggled with, including sexual addiction.

I cried through a lot of his story.

Not because I felt sorry for him.

Because I recognized myself in parts of it.

But I also saw something else.

I saw somebody who had been through some of the same darkness and was still standing.

When the meeting was over, I gave him my card and asked him to reach out when he had the chance.

I don't know where that conversation will go. Maybe nowhere.

But I wanted to talk to somebody who understood something about the road I'm trying to walk.

Wednesday was quieter. I met with the ministry counsellor at the house, and I was grateful to have somebody to talk to. I was still shaken up from Monday and hadn't really been able to get back into my normal routine.

I still had to work that night.

I struggled to be effective.

That shouldn't have surprised me.

I was exhausted.

I wasn't sleeping well.

My mind was somewhere else.

I Need to Heal

On Thursday, I finally slept until about 10:30 in the morning.

I needed the sleep, but I hated losing half my day.

The schedule at Wendy's is one of the reasons I didn't want to go back there in the first place. The hours are brutal, the work is hard, and right now I need something that gives me a chance to rebuild my life rather than simply survive another shift.

But I still had Bible study that night.

I went.

I also met my mentor for dinner beforehand, as I often do.

There was a heaviness hanging over the evening.

I had to be particularly careful because we were eating at Wendy's—the same Wendy's where I work. I didn't want to have an emotional breakdown in front of coworkers or make things uncomfortable.

My mentor has a lot in common with me. He cares about me.

But I don't think he can completely understand what this particular situation feels like.

And that's okay.

I'm not sure anybody can.

My relationship with my second daughter has also been strained.

She has asked me for money a few times, and that's difficult for me because I simply don't have it right now.

I don't want my children to see their dad as somebody who can't help them.

I want to be able to say, “I've got you,” and actually mean it.

Right now, sometimes all I can say is, “I'm sorry. I can't.”

That's a hard thing for a father to admit.

At the same time, I am incredibly grateful for what has happened with my oldest daughter.

Things aren't perfect.

Not even close.

But our communication is immeasurably better than it was a year ago.

I don't want to overlook that just because everything else hurts.

That matters.

And I believe God deserves the credit for it.

Maybe I Can't Fix Everything at Once

Friday was busy.

I had counselling in the morning. The appointment was originally arranged around my Uber Eats schedule, but with my bike out of service, even getting there has become another reminder of how much of my life just isn't working right now.

Still, I made it.

And counselling went well.

We talked about Monday. Which meant I had to relive the meeting all over again.

That's hard.

But I need to do it.

I want to get better.

My counsellor suggested that I look into some treatment options to help me deal with the emotional pain and depression I'm carrying. I also want to address my eating disorder and the problems I've had with sexual addiction.

It's nowhere near as bad as it was in 2022.

But I don't want to simply manage it.

I want it gone.

When you have cancer, you don't want to learn how to manage the cancer.

You want it gone.

I know that analogy isn't perfect, but that's how I feel about these things in my own life.

I don't want to spend the rest of my life negotiating with the parts of myself that have caused destruction.

I want to heal.

So I'm willing to explore just about anything that might help me get there.

That feels different from where I was before.

I'm not looking for somebody else to fix me.

I'm looking for ways to do the work myself.

Then the Power Went Out

After counselling, I got back on the bus.

I was actually happy to realize that the day pass I had accidentally received on the way to my appointment was still saving me money.

That was a tiny win.

A bus driver will probably never know how much that meant to me.

I can't even call in a compliment because he technically broke the rules by giving me the day pass instead of a transfer.

But sometimes the smallest things matter.

Then the house manager called.

The power was out at the house.

A power worker had apparently been seen leaving the property, and the house manager was understandably worried.

I helped him calm down and work through what was happening.

Logic is one of my strengths.

It isn't necessarily his.

That's okay.

We all have different strengths.

We eventually figured out that there had been an administrative error with the ministry's accounting department. I was able to get in touch with the right people, and we got it sorted out.

The power would be back within a few hours.

It wasn't my biggest problem.

But it was one less problem.

I'll take it.

Then Came the Job Interview

I called my pastor because I wanted his perspective on everything that had happened since Monday.

He called me back fairly quickly.

I explained everything.

He prayed with me.

I told him I intended to be at church Sunday.

Then I went to a job interview.

I wasn't really expecting it.

Someone from Whitestone had told me about the opportunity. I had actually worked with him for a day around Black Friday last year, so I had some idea of what the work was like.

It was a day job.

Forty hours a week.

Better wages than Wendy's.

Potential opportunities for advancement.

That sounded pretty good to me.

The commute isn't perfect. I had to walk about thirty minutes to get there for the interview. But there are better bus options depending on the start time.

The interview went well.

I was told I'd hear back within about a week.

I don't know what will happen.

I'm praying it works out.

But even having the possibility in front of me felt different.

For the first time in a while, I could see a potential path toward something better.

Interestingly, the job is fairly close to where my second daughter lives now.

That brought another complication.

I worried about accidentally running into her.

Right now, I have been told I will have supervised visits, and I live in a world where even an innocent or unintentional encounter can make me nervous about what might happen next.

I have to be cautious.

That's just where my life is right now.

And Then I Made a $77 Mistake

After the interview, I still had to go to work.

I was working the drive-through with someone else.

A customer created a distraction, I missed what was happening, and he drove away without paying.

The order was $77.

I was furious with myself.

I was also scared.

I already don't make much money.

I don't mind the job for the most part, but some of the realities associated with it are less than ideal.

The hours.

The pay.

The gruelling work.

I already worry about losing it.

And now I had potentially cost the restaurant $77 because I wasn't paying enough attention.

Under normal circumstances, I would have been embarrassed, apologized, learned from it and moved on.

But these weren't normal circumstances.

I was already exhausted.

I was already worried about money.

I was already questioning myself as a father.

I was already carrying everything from the CAS meeting.

So that $77 mistake felt enormous.

That's what this week has been like.

Everything feels heavier because I'm already carrying so much.

I'm Still Here

So where does that leave me?

I still don't know.

I still haven't seen my younger two children.

I have been told I will have supervised visits with my older two, but I still don't know when those visits will actually happen.

I still don't know what happens next with Children's Aid.

I'm still struggling financially.

I'm still working a job that is inadequate to my needs.

I'm still waiting to find out whether that interview turns into something better.

I'm still not sleeping the way I should.

And I'm still struggling with depression.

I'm not going to pretend that one decent interview and a few better days suddenly fixed any of that.

They didn't.

I'm not out of the woods.

There are still moments when I wonder whether my kids would be better off without me.

I hate admitting that.

But I think pretending those thoughts aren't there would be worse.

At the same time, something else is true.

I am still here.

I kept calling people when I was at my lowest.

People showed up.

I went to Whitestone.

I went to counselling.

I called my pastor.

I went to work.

I went to the job interview.

I kept moving.

And somewhere in the middle of all of this, I remembered something I don't want to forget.

My oldest daughter is talking to me again.

A year ago, that relationship looked very different.

Today, it isn't perfect.

But it is better.

Immeasurably better.

Maybe that's part of what I'm learning.

Progress doesn't always arrive when everything else gets better.

Sometimes progress is sitting right there in the middle of the mess.

Sometimes it's a conversation with your daughter.

Sometimes it's a stranger on a bus accidentally giving you a day pass.

Sometimes it's a man from Whitestone dropping what he's doing because he knows you're not okay.

Sometimes it's sitting across from a counsellor and finally saying, “I need help with this.”

Sometimes it's simply getting out of bed and doing the next thing.

Maybe faith looks like that sometimes too.

Not knowing how the story ends.

Not knowing when God is going to make things right.

Not even knowing whether the next week will be better than the last one.

Just trusting Him enough to keep turning the page.

Malachi 4:6 says:

“His preaching will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers.”

I don't know what God is going to do with my family.

I don't know what Children's Aid will decide.

I don't know when I'll see my younger children again.

I don't know whether I'll get this new job.

I don't know how long rebuilding my life is going to take.

But I know this:

I'm still here.

And I'm still trying.

For now, maybe that's enough.