We pulled in to the parking lot and turned off the car. That's when I heard her.
She was screaming obscenities at her daughter, red faced and thoroughly undone about something that was left undone. Her daughter sat in the driver's seat of the car, head hung in humiliation, tears on her cheeks, looking cut to the core.
The 'f word' stings everyone who hears it's ugly.
And my heart broke. It broke for this young girl who didn't deserve her mother's rage. {Does anyone deserve rage?} It broke because this young girl will someday live out the example set for her by her own mother. Odds are that she too will scream obscenities at her children because that is what she knows.
Our legacies, good or bad, last many generations - impacting lives we'll never know.
Without intentionally pursuing a different style of parenting, she will likely be just like her mother, without even trying, without even realizing.
Don't get me wrong, I do not write this from a place of perfection. MANY, MANY are the times I have been in the wrong in my parenting, lashing out grumpy at the undeserved, parenting from a place where no grace could be found. Forgetting that the sculpting of souls requires much tenderness and forever patience, forgetting that I am tying the shoelaces of the future.
Not that I don't have it in me to swear at my children. My sin stains are deep and wide; cavernous at times. My prayer is that I have more of Him in me. You see, without Him I parent on my own strength. I am driven by flesh, controlled by skin; resources so finite. If I'm not relying on His spirit, that grace oxygen that changes everything, I am bound to fail.
Daily I must rise and commit these young lives to the Father, for if left solely in my own hands, their atrophy would be great. I need Him. They need Him - the perfect model of parenting whose grace extends and whose forgiveness reigns perfect at any and every moment. For parenting out of my own resources leaves me dry and shriveled up, and thirsting for Everlasting Water, the only drink that can truly satisfy.
Blessings,
Kim
May all your wanderings this weekend lead you to the One whose grace changes everything.
You are so right Kim what we say & do with our children passes down through the generations. When we are young parents we get stressed about so many things & sometimes take it out on our children. Oh how I would love to relive some of those days & say the right things to Dawn & Teddy. Thank goodness we have a loving Heavenly Father who forgives us when we come to Him with a humbled heart.
ReplyDeleteThanks again for your words. XOXOXO
What a great post and a good reminder of how we are impacting our children and setting an example for them - good or bad. That would have broken my heart too. Isn't it so hard not to intervene too!!
ReplyDelete