Where is Joseph?

One holiday season when the kids were little, times were hard, and I was a client of our local food pantry. I made the comment to my friend who worked at the pantry that I wish we had a nativity set.

The next time I went "shopping" there, wouldn't you know, somebody had donated a nativity set! It may have been part of the toy donations (since at Christmastime, the pantry also made it possible for me to give my children gifts), I don't remember.

I thought it was interesting that the set had four wise men, instead of three. I learned that some people believe that there actually were four wise men, and I thought that was a neat coincidence.

We've had the same nativity set ever since then and have never even lost the baby Jesus, even though he is as tiny as a nickel.

This year when I got the nativity set out and set it up, I realized that there is no Joseph. I don't know if there ever was a Joseph or if maybe the fourth wise man was mistakenly included in Joseph's place.

In my nativity set, Mary is a single mom, just like I was, and in many ways still am, because while I am remarried, I am the one responsible for my children, including the two in college.

I wish I had noticed that this Mary was a single mom way back when... Although I know a lot of single moms now, I didn't at the time when it was just me with three children ages 5 and under. At the time, it felt shameful. What was wrong with me, I wondered?

What was wrong was that I had grown up without a father. Fatherless Daughter Syndrome is a thing, and I have come to understand that it is not my fault. My parents' choices are not anything I had control over. Psychology Today says, "Daughters growing up without a father face specific challenges. Fathers influence their daughters' relational lives, creativity, sense of authority, self-confidence, and self-esteem."

Sometimes I look back and think about how amazing it is that my boys turned out to be happy and productive members of society with good friends, given the circumstances that we were up against. In the same Psychology Today article, there are some statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau indicating that one in four children in this country lives in a home without a biological, step, or adoptive father and that children raised in a father-absent home face a four times greater risk of poverty, are more likely to have behavioral problems, commit crimes, and more. Maybe it's because the extra "wise men" I always tried to include in their lives — coaches, teachers, den leaders, other dads at church — had helped to formulate their idea of how to be.

I wonder if any of my friends who collected food for the food pantry or made sandwiches and hygiene kits for the homeless people in the nearby big city realize that it is people like me — who are really not that much different from they are, and who might be sitting in a nearby church pew — that were or are clients of that food pantry and would be grateful for the sandwich, too? I don't think they all do.

I used to feel humiliated, standing in the checkout line with my vouchers. Now I am grateful that the food pantry was there when I needed it.