OUR OWN EXPERIENCE / Part 337 / For Love and For Justice / Zabeth and Paul Bayne

This post is significant enough to me that it will serve as my entry for the next couple of days. It represents a response to a comment left by an Anonymous writer days ago. 

Hello Anon, I have appreciated many of your comments in the past. Yes technology permits me to discern some identifying features of even Anons. Yours is a provocative comment tonight, by which I mean it causes me to stop and to deliberate a great deal. Your questions and ideas fascinate me. So permit me to speak to some of them. I may even use this one morning as a post. Well here it is.

Christine and I loved our children from the get go. They were beautiful. We were college graduates and old enough for this responsibility of parenthood and desirous for it. We each had extended families in which there had been love and healthy relationships endured.

I am old enough now that my own children are mature adults with families of their own. When my wife and I were younger and starting our family it was in a small Ontario town. I was a freshman pastor. We were determined to be wise and loving parents and to that end we read relevant books and we attended family life seminars. My children were the only small children in the church. As we gained respect and influence both in the church and in the community young families began to attend. Instruction was given in family care and rearing with all of the pertinent subjects such as discipline and values teaching and of course in the church context, spiritual values. The small church became known for its children's programs.

My career took me to different locations over the years yet as our children grew, my wife and I were even more deeply committed to the belief that our most important accomplishment in life would be to nurture good children into responsible adults. Personal time was invaluable. My wife and I took our children on dates, a mother with a son, a father with a daughter, making them feel special and learning to know and love one another and talk about life and important things and even silly things. We filled their lives with good friends both children and adults. We encouraged their pursuits in sports and the arts.

I did not intend to succeed in my career and fail as a dad. I recall informing a large Toronto church interested in having me come as their senior pastor that while I would give all I had to my work, on my list of priorities my family came first. My children were entering their teens at that time. We viewed family vacations as relationship building times after months of intense dedication to school and work. The family stayed tight in large part due to my wife's dedication. She deserves most of the credit. After ten years in Toronto and making plans to move west here to Cloverdale, my university enrolled children stood with us to say farewell to all of our Toronto friends. My children achieving on their own were also testaments that Christine and I had made the right choices. Since we knew that a move west was life changing and probably permanent, we travelled to Peterborough and Smiths Falls as well with our children to say goodbyes to friends we had made over the years.

Now as you have seen in other online sources, I am a grandfather. I am proud of my children and their spouses and their children. We have just recently gathered exuberantly at a Thanksgiving table and we gave thanks to God for so much, not least of all for our families. We walked together, and picked hazlenuts, and played and loved the day. Perhaps you knew this next brief point would be made by a retired pastor. My wife and I early in our life together dedicated our children to God and trusted him to help us and to do for them all that we could not do ourselves to develop them into people who honour righteous values by their lives. Obviously people make personal choices so in that sense there are no guarantees, but we believed that God could override all that was unforeseen.

I have spoken with my children and their spouses numerous times about the Bayne case and child protection in general, the need to protect children, the apparent injustices of some actions with families, the impact of apprehensions upon children, and all of the pursuant subjects. They find it intolerable to think that removal is so prevalent a tool in addressing domestic complaints. They find the invasiveness of government interference abhorrent as I do when stringent accountability to Victoria does not seem to be incorporated into this structure. They are well aware that some situations require for the sake of children, a preventative step of removal and believe that this should be rare and only an initial step to wholesome family reestablishment. They lead busy lives. They do not with regularity I think follow my blog. They ask me occasionally how things are with the Baynes. They hope as so many of you do too, that the Baynes will receive their children without conditions and forever.

At various times I have alerted others about this case. I am not a champion of anything, trumpeting to everyone in my sphere of influence and friendship what I am doing with regard to MCFD and the Baynes. Word spreads. I do however take occasion to ask people who pray, to pray. I am still one of those who believe that God hears.

You asked, “What would a family conference program look like that would be on the same scale as the recently reference bcasw.org social worker association conference?” At this moment, I do not know.