Different kinds of love for children.
I just read a post named, "My child" http://posts.fanbox.com/74fq4 about a child whose parents were estranged and the reaction of the father from there on. It is a sad story about how children sometimes become pawns between two uncompatible parents. It reminded me of two cases that really had me thinking about parents and the kind of love they have for their children.
There was, and this is a true story, a young boy in America somewhere whose parents were estranged from each other. The father had visitation rights and so one time he took David for a weekend away. That weekend while David was asleep in his bed, his father locked the door from the outside and set fire to the room that David was in. He did not want to share David with his wife - he loved him too much he said -so he decided to kill him, so that his wife could not have him.
Luckily, or unluckily, miraculously David got saved but with very extensive burns to all of his body. I saw David on the Phil Donahue show, a few years after I had seen the movie about him. (The movie is called David.) He was in a full body cast. That is probably his uniform for the rest of his life. He was constantly in pain and when asked how he felt about his father, he candidly said "such kind of love is very destructive - I never want to see my father in my life again.
Poor David, there are others like him who suffer because their parent's love for them is a selfish love rather than a healthy one.
However, here's one to lift your spirits.:) This too is a true story.
There was a lady in Canada who had 7 children, and a husband who (I forget was either riddled with arthiritis or an alcoholic and) could barely look after himself – forget about looking after his children.
The lady found out that she was suffering from Cancer and had only a couple of years to live. They were a poor family and she did not want to leave her children for the State to look after, after she died. So she sent out ads to have her children adopted out to loving and caring families who could look after them as their own. She interviewed and asked her children before she gave them up for adoption, whether they liked the people that she found and would they like to live with them for the rest of their lives.
While she was alive she managed to find good homes for them all, except for one who was disabled. She did manage to find a safe place for him as well though, although not in a loving home. There is a movie about this lady and her family as well, and it is called, “Who will love my children?”
Well, this happened a very long time ago, over 50 years or so, but I remember, while I was still in Canada somewhere in the mid 80s they had a show where they brought all these children together again (of course, they were all adults by then – the disabled one had not made it, he had died some years before) but the rest of them all spoke of the loving homes that they came from and how their mother had lived alone her last few days, in order to ensure that they had happy homes.
Hats off to mother's like that!!! It brings back faith in humanity and constructive parental love. :)
