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 The Work of Parents By Clarissa Worley Sproul
Now you might assume with a bit of her history under your belt, that it wasn’t such a big deal that he was gone, he’d been gone in many ways for most all of her life. But how wrong you would be. As she unraveled the story to me, she felt worse about his death than her dear mother’s—even though this made no sense to her at all. Actually, her response to her dad’s death makes all the sense in the world. If you read the teachings of the Bible, parents are the agents of blessing. They are the ones who pass on love and goodness to their children, releasing them to pursue their own lives when the time comes. When a parent acts their part and blesses their child, the kids are free in that love to rush off into adulthood and explore life. Love sets us free. This means that if that parent dies, great sadness may engulf the child, but it’s a pure pain of loss, a tender grief. Not only is the child free to embrace the loss, but they find they are also free to let go and move on. And so the child grieves and then returns to life. Contrast that with the parent—agent of blessing—who does not bless, but instead curses (rejects, shames, ignores and abandons). The children of these parents will not know freedom, but instead rejection that causes fear. The opposite of freedom is fear. Fear binds. Fear creates paralyses and stokes insecurity. And in turn, this creates a child who is not free to rush off into adulthood, but instead, remains bound to the distant parent—emotionally holding out for resolution—for blessing, ever fearful they’re not lovable or enough. Swallow this, and it makes perfect sense why my friend has a lot more uneasy emotions to deal with around her father’s death. She and her mother were close. Her mom’s passing brought their love to the surface and she grieved the loss. With her dad, on the other hand, there was this unfulfilled longing and all the emotional baggage that goes along with rejection and absence. She was holding out (even if on a subconscious level) for dad to be what he never was in her life. So at his passing, what surfaced was the frustration and pain of rejection. She was distraught not just for him to be gone, but for the loss of a dream that could never be a reality now—the hope of really knowing her father. This should ring loud and clear to the parent in all of us. I'll bet the single most profound gift a parent can give is to release their children to the freedom of being loved. A child who is blessed can’t wait to run off and experience life. Instead, so many times children do not receive freedom, but instead find themselves hanging on to the hope that their parents will somehow meet their needs, desperate to get that blessing; to hear that they're good enough. It’s as heartbreaking as it is common. Adults navigating their lives from a place of insecurity and fear, from a sense of what is lacking instead of a sense of adventure. It seems that this is a topic parents ought to hear often, very often. The role parent’s play in children becoming adults cannot be underestimated. We are, after all raising parents when we parent our children. We raise them to bless or curse—depending on our treatment of them, and this becomes our legacy, a perpetuated cycle of empowerment or repression. So which will it be for you kids? And how can you be sure? Visit Life Notes ______________________________ Clarissa Worley Sproul writes from the Pacific Northwest. All rights reserved © 2010 AnswersForMe.org. Click here for content usage information. Add your comment. |
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