Looking into yesterday can be painful but productive. At least my youngest two children will have a mom who can parent from wisdom instead of through fear.
Twenty-five years ago, I was a young married woman having children every 2.5 years. I had no idea the intricate fear structure in my soul that influenced my parenting.
As I look back, I see myself – picking up my kids from the rare occasion of having a babysitter, quizzing them and analyzing their body language for the first five minutes to try to discern if something bad happened. Subconsciously, I micromanaged their childhood moments so that they’d never, ever experience sadness or pain.
My concerns were legitimate. I clearly remembered many of my childhood experiences and was in the process of cleaning myself from the unhealthy residue of those experiences. Statistics show that bullying and peer-to-peer sexual abuse is increasing. But there is a difference between parenting from peace-filled wisdom and fear-based projection.
I’m a bit in shock as I sit a few months from turning fifty, and realize that no matter how successful my four young adults are today, that success is a product of the gracious and healing hand of God. Although most people would have never known it, and my husband and I certainly didn’t at the time, but one child dealt with suicidal thoughts as a nine-year-old, another experienced tormenting dreams that paralyzed them physically while they slept, and another dealt with a huge amount of self-rejection at age five.
But I get it. I’ve read online articles, books and blogs about everything from epigenetics to early child development and I know now that my own early trauma was not only passed down to my children, but that it caused a bent in my God-focused journey. A bent inward, like an arrow jabbing at the deep wounds in my soul. Each child’s birth was an unconscious trigger. I didn’t realize that my motherly effort to “save” them from pain was a symptom of my own need to be healed.
We live in a broken world. We have to face the reality of the war zone we were born into. One way that Jesus destroys the works of the devil is through us overcoming struggle and hurts and wounds with His help, not in our own strength. I can’t keep my kids from every situation that will make them cry, but I can weep with them. I can’t monitor every friendship, but I can teach them how to choose wisely and pray for them. I can teach them about the world-brutal but beautiful, hate-filled and divisive, yet filled with people who will genuinely accept them for the content of their character.
Most of all I can point them to Jesus. He fills. He restores. He heals and teaches anyone who comes to Him.
Psalm 91: 14-16 “Because he has loved Me, therefore I will deliver him;
I will set him securely on high, because he has known My name.
“He will call upon Me, and I will answer him;
I will be with him in [e]trouble;
I will rescue him and honor him.
“With [f]a long life I will satisfy him
And [g]let him see My salvation.”
In another post, I will discuss why the Bible calls children, His “arrows”. What a mighty purpose they have!