SLEEPLESS NIGHTS—

Looking back I see that my kids had to create their own happiness after Lyn and I split up. I’m glad they’re happy now, at least to the degree possible under the circumstances. I reflect once again on the song of tobyMac, I don’t want to gain the whole world and lose my soul. I’m trying to learn to make it my business to take into consideration the consequences for my own actions.



There is a strangeness that grips me. My adult children live on another continent. Sometimes I think I squandered away the formidable years of their lives, although that was not my intent. Not by any stretch. I struggle with that every day of my life, often pondering what on earth I can do to recall those years and fill in the spaces.



Then I am reminded it is never too late to do it right, but I have also learned it is impossible to retrace my steps, to look back on yesterday as if I could change a single thing.

I still have requirements on me, and I contemplate how I will deal with those things that may have been left undone. When I weigh up the fact that I may have, through the years, considered another's child (my many soccer children) before my own, I find myself awake in the small hours of the morning.

There is nothing more painful than sleepless nights.

From GIBBO's Story
Jane Bennett Gaddy, Ph.D.

Posted 8th May 2011 by Jane B. Gaddy