I agree, and I want to make clear here I'm not responding negatively at all. But sometimes it isn't possible.
With my kids, initially it was me who was out of their lives. I struggled with PTSD, addiction, unfaithfulness, and a host of other sins in my previous marriage. But I came to Christ in 1993, after my ex divorced me for my behavior. What happened next is nothing short of ironic, if not outright bizarre.
She had her own addictions problems that I never knew about. She met a supposedly ex-felon on federal parole for meth manufacture, and started dating him over the next couple years. One Friday I came over to her house to pick up the kids for my weekend, and rang the doorbell. My eight-year-old son came to the door. I asked where his mom was, and he didn't know. She hadn't been home since the night before. He'd gotten himself and his sister up for school, fed them breakfast -- cold cereal, but it was better than nothing -- and got them on the bus. They were scared, but trying to cope.
I told them to pack some extra things in their bags and took them to my house. She didn't show up at her house all weekend. Or into the following week. I filed for temporary custody, with notice of intent to acquire custodial parental rights. In the next six months, she failed to show up or had her lawyer postpone hearings on the custodial rights petition more than a dozen times. Finally, the judge got fed up with her.
Now, while it's controversial to do so, I'm going to ask -- If it had been me abandoning the kids and her seeking custodial rights, does anyone think it would have taken six months for the judge to "get fed up with" me, if the circumstances were the same, just reversed?
I've no sympathy for a parent of either gender acting in the way she did. But I've been criticized for not "making sure" their mom was involved in their lives while I raised them by myself and put them through college -- admittedly a task made easier by my son's Division I soccer scholarship.
Nonetheless, It wasn't up to me to "make sure" of anything regarding her. I didn't shut her out, she shut herself out. She made her choice. We made ours.
Sometimes, that's just the way it is.