This post is from Moms Take Ten episode 125, Parenting in Scripture–Hurting Others in Our Hurt, which you can listen to wherever you listen to podcasts or at https://sites.libsyn.com/403493/parenting-in-scripture-hurting-others-in-our-hurt
The past few weeks I have been a part of a class at my church on the book of Lamentations. I had the privilege of teaching through chapter 4. Now, I don’t know about you, but I hadn’t spent much time in Lamentations prior to this class. It is a book written following the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians as a result of the sins of the people of God. As the book begins, the author, often thought to be Jeremiah, proclaims, “How?!” This word that is used, as Samuel Saldivar explained in his commentary, is ‘eka which “communicates astonishment and shock and is used four times in Lamentations to set the tone of mourning (Lam. 1:1; 2:1; 4:1,2). Even though the prophets from Moses to Jeremiah had warned about these punishments, the actual experience of them brings about shock and dismay to both God’s people and to the surrounding on-lookers.”
The destruction is truly terrible. Verse after verse talk about the suffering and desolation. Everything was flipped on its head. It’s the kind of Scripture reading that leaves you gasping and shaking your head. We start to agree with the author, “How could this have happened?!” In the middle of chapter four is a verse that really raised a response in me.
The hands of compassionate women
have cooked their own children;
they became their food
during the destruction of my dear people. (Lam. 4:10)
That had to have raised a response in you as well. Can you imagine? Your answer is probably, “absolutely not!”
I read that verse and was horrified. How could that have happened? How could she do that? We are talking about a mother here. A mother doing what to her child?! No way. Uh uh. Not ok.
And you know what. That isn’t the first time I have had that reaction to hearing about something that someone did to a child, whether it was their child or someone else’s. As a former trauma counselor, a foster parent, an adoptive parent, I have heard a lot of things done to children that ought never be done. Right now, stories might be coming to mind for you that still raise anger and horror in you.
In my indignation, what I might even call righteous indignation because those things displease God himself, I can start to distance myself from the person that committed the sin. To “other” them. In my condemnation of the action, which is absolutely wrong, I judge the person harshly and begin to elevate myself. I would never do such a thing! I’m such a better parent than that person is. A better human even!
As I was starting to have those thoughts about the women mentioned in Lamentations, a question rose to mind, “When have you hurt others in your hurt? When have you harmed those you were to protect?”
And I was humbled.
The reality is, while I cannot relate to the actions they took,I can relate to the emotions of grief, loss, self-protection, even desperation, and to being a sinner. I too have hurt others in my hurt. I have harmed those I am to protect.
As much as I would love to say that I am a stellar parent, I sin against my children all the time. Sometimes it is done from my own hurt, sometimes from my fear and insecurity, sometimes my self-righteousness and anger. And I justify a lot of it too.
Jim Jackson from Connected Families has talked about parents struggling with the same sins/misbehaviors that their children do, we just do it in a more mature way. They express themselves loudly and perhaps harshly and we call it disrespect. We express ourselves loudly and perhaps harshly and we call it parenting. Hands up if you have ever yelled at your child, “Don’t you ever yell at me like that!” I have.
Many of us were parented that way. Or talked to that way by teachers, coaches, and bosses. We take what we know and we engage our children in that way. We use our authority almost as a weapon to get the desired response from our children. If they aren’t listening or doing what we want them to be doing, we power up even if it comes at a cost to them. It is worth it, we think.
Parents have also been known to put the responsibility for our behavior on the child. “If they would just obey, then I wouldn’t have to punish.” “If they would listen to me the first time then I wouldn’t have to yell.” As Connected Families puts it, we are communicating to our children that they are in control of us, of what we say and do and even how we feel. Which is interesting because we were just talking about claiming our authority fiercely but here we are giving them the power. It’s conflicting messaging, right? It puts a weight on the child that they shouldn’t have to bear, not to mention the hurt and harm our responses might be causing.
Sometimes we harm those we are supposed to protect.
And sometimes we hurt others in our hurt.
There can be genuine hurt underneath our responses to our children as well. Our child may say they hate us, or they physically hurt us, or they ignore us, and we hurt. Afterall we love this little person. We have poured our heart and our time and our resources into them and this is how they treat us. So we lash out in our anger at them, or shame them or belittle them or give them a guilt trip.
Maybe it wasn’t even the child who hurt us but someone else and we haven’t processed it yet so we are just carrying around these emotions and end up taking them out on those closest to us…who happen to be our children. Or something our children do reminds us of what someone else did and we treat them as though they were the ones who wronged us.
You get the idea. We hurt others, our children, in our hurt.
It is a sobering thing to know that we have hurt our little, or not so little, people. We aren’t stuck there though. We have the opportunity to make things right, first with the Lord and then with our children.
The author of Lamentations, as he grieves what has happened to his people, he never loses sight that the Lord brought it all about as a consequence for their sins. God is a just God, he cannot tolerate sin. There must be a punishment for it. And though he had given them opportunity upon opportunity to change their ways and to follow him, his people rebelled. Therefore he punished them. But the point wasn’t just to punish, it was to motivate them to turn to him.
When God spoke those questions to me as I was reading Lamentations 4, he wasn’t doing it to shame me but to give me an opportunity to repent and turn to him. When we confess our sins to him, he forgives us, cleanses us and helps us choose differently the next time, and the next time, and the next.
Making it right with our children also involves confession and seeking their forgiveness. Sometimes our children are quick to forgive and sometimes it takes them time, that’s ok. We are only responsible for our part.
After confessing and seeking forgiveness, there’s another thing we can do, not only to make it right with our child but also to help us choose differently in the future…it’s a little tool that Connected Families calls the do-over. It’s just that, doing it over but doing it differently, how you wish you had, how you want to in the future.
It can be a full scenario do-over where you ask your child if you can rewind completely and do the interaction all over again. Or you can simply say, “I don’t like how I said that. Here’s how I wish I had said it.”
This is a much more effective way for us to retrain our brains than just thinking, “next time, don’t yell.” And it lets all of us, ourselves and our kids, have a more connected, godly interaction. It shows our kids that we might mess up in this house but there is grace and always a second chance.
In a couple of weeks, my guest for the Parenting Practicals episode is going to share more about do-overs and fun ways that can look. But you don’t have to wait to try it out! Even if the interaction coming to mind was a couple of days ago, it is never too late to make things right with our children and to repent before the Lord.
Lyssa Stoyko 