2028 Bluff Oak St.
Apopka, FL 32712-3945
(407) 889-5524
email powerlines@juno.com
By Sandra Doran
(This article was originally printed in The Adventist Review.)
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Some of the letters that arrive in my mailbox are stained with tears. “I’m so lost from everything, and I just don’t see a way back. I’ve come to the conclusion that maybe I don’t belong in church anymore. I can’t pray at night, as I don’t feel it goes past my pillow. I feel strongly that my name has come up for review, and I didn’t make it. I bet I’ve broken at least half of everything I was ever taught to believe in. I sit in church, and I feel like a fake. I feel like I’ve lost it all.”
Sometimes life is like a deep chasm closing in on us with claustrophobic darkness. David felt that way when he wrote: “My soul is full of troubles: and my life draweth nigh unto the grave. I am counted with them that go down into the pit. I am as a man that hath no strength: free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, whom thou rememberest no more: and they are cut off from thy hand. Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps. Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves (Ps. 88:3-7). No way out. Dark. Remembered no more. Cut off. Low. Afflicted. Paul felt that way when he wrote: “I don’t understand myself at all, for I really want to do what is right, but I can’t. I do what I don’t want to--what I hate. I know perfectly well that what I am doing is wrong, and my bad conscience proves that I agree with these laws I am breaking. But I can’t help myself, because I’m no longer doing it. It is sin inside me that is stronger than I am that makes me do these evil things. I know I am rotten through and through so far as my old sinful nature is concerned. No matter which way I turn I can’t make myself do right. I want to, but I can’t. When I want to do good, I don’t; and when I try not to do wrong, I do it anyway” (Rom. 7:15-19, TLB). “Miserable creature that I am, who is there to rescue me out of this body doomed to death?” (verse 24, NEB). Evil. Rotten through and through. Miserable. Doomed to death. Modern society, David, Paul--we’re all in the same boat. Looking to ourselves, we find there’s no way out. Praying alone in the darkness, we hear our pillows mocking us. You’re no good. You’ve failed. You’re out of the loop, outside of the circle, out of the ballpark, a poor excuse for a human being. The tobacco on your breath betrays you. You can no longer play the game. Your number’s up. You might as well admit it. Step aside. Make way for those who are serious about the Christian walk. Looked at from an earthly perspective, things can be pretty bleak. The rewards go to the brave, the strong, the mighty. Some of us just don’t cut it. We’re on the wrong side of the bell curve, the broken side of the tracks. It’s so hard for us to see that God’s way of looking at things is as different from ours as the east is from the west. We don’t have to be good enough. We don’t have to earn anything. We don’t even have to feel like we’re being heard when we say our prayers. We have only to lift our eyes. David, after bemoaning his fate, lifts his eyes and sings: “I will sing of the mercies of the Lord for ever: with my mouth will I make known thy faithfulness to all generations. For I have said, Mercy shall be built up for ever: thy faithfulness shalt thou establish in the very heavens. . . . For who in heaven can be compared unto the Lord? Who among the sons of the mighty can be likened unto the Lord?” (Ps. 89:1-6). Faithfulness. Mercy. Magnificent power. Paul, after commiserating over his condition, lifts his eyes and proclaims with boldness: “The power of the life-giving Spirit--and this power is mine through Christ Jesus--has freed me from the vicious circle of sin and death” (Rom. 8:2, TLB). Power. Life. Freedom. It’s not about feeling worthy. It’s not about “making it.” It’s not about “belonging in church.” It’s about lifting our eyes above our own paltry, wretched condition and praising the Father, Basking in the grace of the Son. Tonight, before you go to bed, read Psalm 100. Then thank God for His goodness and mercy and go to sleep. Tomorrow read Psalm 103. The next night turn to Romans 5. Lift your eyes. Rejoice in the hope of God’s glory. Receive His abundant grace. |
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I have before me a 21-page letter written by a mother lamenting the difficulties encountered in raising a child. The mother speaks of afternoons she let opportunities to affirm her son pass by unheralded. She writes of mornings she acted too hastily, reprimanding her son for minor errors. Then she turns the focus to a recent episode during which her boy appeared at a get-together in torn dirty pants, embarrassing the family.
The mother’s concerns and sorrows are not unusual. As parents we agonize over our relationships with our children. We realize that somewhere along the way, after carrying the bundled treasure across the threshold of our lives, we have hurt them. They have hurt us. Lamenting the errors of parenting is not unusual. What is unusual is that the writer of this letter is 87 years old. Her son is 60. My heart goes out to this woman, to the son she bore, and to all mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, trying desperately to figure out their roles and how to help one another. Our intentions as parents are rarely the problem. We all want the best for our children, no matter what age they are. We all dream of producing fully functioning adults who can support themselves, establish meaningful relationships, enjoy the zest of a challenge, maintain high ideals, believe in God, and live committed Christian lives. And when that doesn’t happen, we turn to our memory banks and shuffle through the card file, pulling out the anecdotes, incidents, and mornings and afternoons that highlight the sins we committed as parents that have brought our families to this place in time. We are haunted by the memory of a cry, a look, a closed door. When the child was 4 we spanked her for throwing a tantrum in church in front of a shocked congregation. When she was 8, we lacked the funds to send her to a Christian summer camp when all the other children her age were going. And when she was 16 we ignored the failing grades, the teachers’ warnings. If only we had been better parents, we tell ourselves, things would have turned out differently. And so we overcompensate. On some subconscious level we justify our actions by reasoning, “If I hadn’t botched up so many times as parent, if I hadn’t messed up this human being that came to me as an innocent baby, if I had done my part properly, he wouldn’t have this problem now.” In penance we allow ourselves to be used, spent, overextended, by the child-turned-teenager, young adult, middle-aged man. We find it more and more difficult to draw boundaries--to see ourselves, our sons, our daughters, as adults capable of constructing distinct lives. We sink deeper and deeper into dependent relationships, agonizing over our own shortcomings personified in our flesh and blood. Our 24-year-old daughter lacks the ability to earn her own keep. Our 30-year-old son cannot maintain a lasting relationship. Our 60-year-old has developed a lifetime pattern of instability, job changes, and shiftlessness. What to do? First, we must unleash ourselves from the guilt that ties us forever to the role of caregiver. Alone with the Father, we must cry out, unburdening all of our own frailty, humanity, weakness, and lack of perception in the role of parenthood. Getting up from our knees, we must claim the sweet grace of the present, the unsullied day. Second, we must forgive our children. Forgive them for not turning out in the ways that we had hoped. Forgive them for being subject to frailty, passion, human weakness, and insensitivity. Forgive them for being themselves. Finally, we must relinquish our role as the savior of our adult children. Realizing that we do not possess the objectivity needed to help those we love the most, we must trust them to the wiles of their own decisions, the wisdom of professionals, the mercy of the Father. In doing so, we gain new energy to pursue our lives and free our sons and daughters to live theirs. |
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Sandra Finley Doran, Ed.D. 2028 Bluff Oak St. Apopka, FL 32712-3945 (407) 889-5524 email powerlines@juno.com |
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