Let Them Be Glad
I have mentioned before that Ray is my dictionary, encyclopedia, and Bible concordance. He is also my news reporter. Yesterday he sent me a link to a tragic story about a man whom I will call Joe. Joe grew up in what he believed to be a good home. He believed his father to be a good man. I’ll call his father Frank.
Three years ago Joe found out that his father was not what he had always seemed. Frank is now in prison after being convicted of heinous crimes.
Many parents fret over what their children have put them through. The roles are reversed here. Joe is still trying to figure out what was really true about his childhood. He admits to having a lot of anger. Still, he writes his father in prison and also drives there to visit him. Even with all that his father has put him through, Joe said that he cannot erase the fact that this is his father.
The relationship between a parent and child is a complex one. Sometimes these relationships are close and loving. Sometimes they are strained and distant. Parents and children know one another so well that they may find it easy to judge one another.
I know from your email correspondence with me that some of you have the close and loving kind of relationship with yours and your husband’s parents and others have the strained and distant kind.
Your children are watching how you relate to their grandparents. Do you want that close and loving kind of relationship with your own children when they are adults? Do everything you can to model that with your own parents and with your husband’s parents. I know a woman (I’ll call her Jean) whose father was in many ways a scoundrel. As long as Jean’s parents lived, I saw her treat both of them with kindness and honor. I never saw Jean treat either of her parents with disrespect. Now that Jean’s own children are grown, they are devoted to this woman who loved and honored anyway, because she could not erase the fact that this man who was a scoundrel was, after all, her father.
Think about ways you can honor your father and your mother. This is great practice for treating others the way you want to be treated. Now that my own mother lives with us, I am reminded of the example I am setting. I want to treat my mother well for many reasons: I love her, God commands it, and I know that others are watching– some of those watching are my children and grandchildren.
The father of the righteous will greatly rejoice,
And he who sires a wise son will be glad in him.
Let your father and your mother be glad,
And let her rejoice who gave birth to you.
Proverbs 23:24-25
Thank you for an important reminder. I have issues with my parents, each of whom has very different values and priorities from mine. But my son could potentially have issues with me, and I definitely want to model respect and connection to my parents so he’ll hopefully treat me the same way when he’s out on his own.
I’m so sorry that this is so hard for you and for so many others. It is a challenging topic for me to write about. I much prefer lighter and more joyful topics, but I want to help families look at the long term and try to help them avoid pain years down the road. I think about this issue a lot and try to come up with ways to share it with all of you. I had already chosen the passage in this blog to use sometime and then, after reading the story about “Joe” and “Frank,” I thought it would be a good example for all of us mothers. There are some tough issues in families, but I thought by telling about a man writing to and visiting a father in prison, I might help some mothers put their own issues with their parents into perspective. I hope I didn’t sound like this is easy. Some issues with parents are horrible ones, such as abuse, neglect, addiction, and, in Joe and Frank’s case, crime. Still, God’s Word says, “Honor your father and mother (which is the first commandment with a promise), so that it may be well with you, and that you may live long on the earth” (Ephesians 6:2-3). Somehow we all have to honor our parents to be obedient to God, for the sake of our parents who need that honor, for our own sakes (“so that it may be well with us”), and as examples for our children so that they will honor us and then “it may be well with” them.