Afternoon Reflection on Forgiving Parents. Share the information. Good people, Have you been holding onto childhood pain? Do you harbor deep-seeded resentment for the way your parents raised you? Do you blame them for the circumstances of your life today? Obviously, not everyone has been blessed with a happy home – with patient, loving, attentive parents. Parents, just like any other person, needs our forgiveness for their sin of omission and commission. It’s time to let go and move on! And not because your parents necessarily deserve it – they may not! At all. But YOU do! You deserve to be free of such emotional poison. It’s time to let it go. Following, are specific steps you can take to unpack the baggage of blame and anger and resentment and, perhaps, begin to establish a new kind of relationship with your parents, or at least be able to let the past be buried in the past so that you can begin moving forward untethered to the pull of yesterday. 1. Redefine Your Relationship. Allow people to evolve and change. And remind yourself that parents are people too. 2. Be Grateful for the Blueprint of what NOT to do Raising Your Kids. We don’t come with owner’s manuals. And yet, we are far more complex than any piece of furniture or computer program we have ever had to put together or install. 3. Forgive Them for Being the Only Thing They Knew how to Be. Impatient, unkind and punitive parents aren’t impatient, unkind and punitive simply because you were unworthy of their patience, kindness or compassion. They were that way because they are impatient, unkind and punitive people. In other words, how you were treated is all about them, not you. 4. Recognize They are likely Products of Their own Parents’ Mistakes and Flaws We reap what we sow. And we also “reap” the traits that our parents “sowed” as they raised us. We are products of both parental successes and mistakes. 5. Write it Down. Sometimes we bury our feelings where they fester and decay, and then begin to infect other parts of the psyche as well. There can be a cleansing quality to putting pain to paper too. Be as explicit and detailed as you can. When you’re done, read it as a solemn recognition of the past. Then light the thing on fire and burn it. 6. Learn from Parental Strengths and Weaknesses. Your parents were not just your parents. They, like all of us, are complex beings with a mixed bag of character strengths and flaws. 7. Read the Book, A Child Called It, then be Grateful If you’ve read this autobiographical work by Dave Pelzer, you likely know your parents may not have been all that bad after all. Be thankful they at least had something going for them. 8. Let the Work You do in Your Own Home be the Salve that Heals the Wounds in Your Heart. If you grew up without love, smother your children with it. If you grew up with family secrets, don’t have any. If you grew up with harsh criticism and ridicule and impatience, then be sure to compliment, love, and exercise patience with your children. 9. Take Responsibility for Your Life This can be a hard pill to swallow. Still, it’s important to stop blaming your parents for current problems. Did they lay the foundation for the problem? Perhaps. But it’s yours now. That’s the inescapable bottom line of it. 10. Talk to Them Not out of rage or to guilt or shame them. Just talk. Be dispassionate. Simply ask them what in the world happened and why. Then listen. Let’s be clear, though, it may make things worse. But then again, it may lead to some kind of resolution. 11. Stop Putting so Much Stock in How You were Raised. Instead of constantly peeling away the scabs of life to see how things are healing underneath, decide what you want out of life, what traits are required to obtain what you want, and then act. 12. Assume Good Intent. Assume the best motives behind what very well may have been the worst practices. But assume they did the best they knew how (similar to #3). We sometimes have the habit of ascribing pure motives to our own flaws and evil intent to others. Instead, try being as magnanimous about their flaws as we hope others will be about our own. HAVE I MINISTERED TO MY CONGREGATION.
Posted on: Thu, 18 Dec 2014 11:36:21 +0000
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