You’re a Good Good Father

To give God permission to bring down the barriers takes everything you have and the excruciating pain of vulnerability is scary.

Source: TeePublic

Deuteronomy 5:16 tells us; ‘Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the LORD your God is giving you’. How is this done when a parent or parents are truly perverse (‘showing a deliberate and obstinate desire to behave in a way that is unreasonable or unacceptable’ – Google online dictionary)? We can and should still obey God in these difficult circumstances and prayer can make all the difference and in fact, to do so is to truly find life. We need to ‘dig deep’ to find the divine objectivity which enables us to love and to wisely pity the unhealed parent/s while at the same time avoid being overly diminished or impacted by the darkness or whatever is amiss. Within the objectivity must be built the understanding that love is something stronger than mere kindness.

As a child I remember feelings that troubled and confused me. I didn't understand myself or my circumstance and I felt I must be really bad to have what seemed awful thoughts and feelings toward my parents. I was a child who believed in God as I had given my life to Him, but I did not know love, as the church my mum attended was incredibly harsh and legalistic. I reached times of great crisis and at the age of 13 I completely shut down and at a subconscious level I just wanted to die or disappear. I developed severe anorexia which later included bulimia, drug and alcohol addiction. There is a reason a child closes down including trauma and shock which results in feelings getting shut away. Walls of defense are put up and coping mechanisms are set in place in a desperate attempt to survive. However, God has done amazing things in my life over many years. He has enabled me to face my true childhood and let down walls and to allow Him into what felt unbearable pain. He has taken so much time to forgive me and to validate emotions and pain in order for me to realise that I was worth something. In seeing I was of great worth to Him I could begin to forgive those who had injured me deeply. I have sobbed so much that at times I thought I would never stop, but the release has been incredible. Dark depression has lifted and a lightness in my being is such a gift.

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What God has given me is divine objectivity, moving me from the subjective child place in relation to my parents. I was given adult maturity with its capacity to stand above the problems, to see them for what they really were. God gave me the ability and confidence to name them before Him and to utterly forgive and no longer be grievously entangled. Because of this, the way was opened to me to begin to accept myself. Am I not bone of my parent’s bone and flesh of their flesh? To reject a parent is in the end to reject oneself. When feelings, emotions and pain get shut away it unfortunately affects our health generally, our mental health and our ability to relate to others.

To give God permission to bring down the barriers takes everything you have and the excruciating pain of vulnerability is scary. To begin a journey hand in hand with the lover of our soul is a gift beyond words. I only have a story because of Jesus, without Him there is no story. We need to know we are loved in the very core of our beings. I know that when you are so broken you cannot comprehend love or being loved but there is a beautiful God who just adores you. He is so patient, so kind, so full of tenderness and forgives completely. He hears your cries and you matter to Him. He can break the dungeon door open, He smashes chains that bind us to addictions and He gives us strength when we have nothing left. Ephesians 3:20-21 ’Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen’.

This is a prayer that helped me to bring my parents to Him; Father I thank you for creating my parents in Your image. With all my heart, I forgive them for not becoming all You created them to be. I realise now that they needed the healing that I am still now receiving. Someway, somehow Lord as I accept and forgive my parents, may their life as it has been handed on to me become all You ever intended it to be. Lord I forgive them of all their offences against me. I accept them as they are, as unhealed and needy people. There but for Your grace, I would be. I thank You for all You have made them to be. I will continue to look for the real person/s You intended them to be and in Your name I will affirm it whenever I see it. I look to You now for the affirmation I always wanted so badly from them. Love them whenever You can Lord, through me. Amen

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May God bless and enrich your life

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