The bible teaches us how children are to respond to their parents: to obey and to honor. As children, we are to obey. I like The Remedy’s translation of Ephesians 6:1, “Children obey the Christlike leadership of your parents”. Ideally, parents would train their children in godly wisdom, and it is right for children to obey instruction that comes from healthy, godly mothers and fathers who are doing their best to parent their children as God leads them. However, this is not every family’s experience. Some children are raised by parents who do not love and serve God. They live in service to themselves and make decisions according to the flesh. In such cases, what if there is no “Christlike leadership” to follow? The letter of the law would say to obey all instruction from parents, even if it’s unhealthy and sinful. The spirit of the law would say there are limits to obedience that would cause physical, emotional, or spiritual injury to a child.
As adult children, we are to honor our parents. This is different from obedience. Honoring our mother and father once we are grown looks more like managing differences with grace. For many families, any disagreement between the two generations’ values, lifestyles, and decisions results in a severance of the relationship. Such families have not learned how to navigate differences and still maintain connection. In my own family, my mother so rejected my decision to quit my job to stay at home with my firstborn child that she did not speak to me for a year. Do you have a similar story of rejection or judgement?
In other families, grown children yearn for their parents’ approval, and arrange their lives in ways that strive to meet parental expectations rather than following the plan God has for them. This yearning and striving often continues even after a parent’s death. Dr. Henry Wright theorizes that chronic fatigue syndrome is a performance disorder, resulting from drivenness to meet the expectation of a parent in order to receive love and acceptance. God can fill the void left from parents who missed the mark (Psalm 27:10). A shift from getting a parent to love us to receiving God’s unconditional love brings healing.
A healthy balance between the two extremes of rejection and overconnection would be to live our own lives while respecting our parents and allowing them to be how they are going to be. While this may not be what we want, giving something permission creates more tolerance for what we cannot change. You cannot make another person be different than they are, but you can control how to respond to them. We can celebrate the truth that in His love, God gives every person the freedom to choose Him and His ways or not. Every mother and father is free to accept Christ or reject Him. Shifting our focus upward may lessen the pain of the natural experience.
What expectations, losses, disappointments, or downright sinful behavior needs to be grieved so that you can heal from mother or father issues? The older generation of Israel had to die off so the younger generation could rise up in faith and take the land God promised them (Numbers 14). As New Covenant believers, we do not have to wait for a anyone’s absence in order to believe and follow God for ourselves. Instead of asking “what would my mother/father want me to do?”, how about asking, “God, what do YOU want me to do?”.
Break soul ties of guilt, shame, control, and disappointment if you are stuck in the wilderness of old cycles with your parents that inhibit your ability to honor them from a place of wisdom and grace versus a place of manipulation or dependency. Have a funeral over what needs to be grieved so that you can love, honor, or remember your parents while having the freedom to live your own life.
-April Chapel, MA, ALC
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