Patterns We Didn’t Learn From…
When we find ourselves having the same problems with different people (or with God), we might be living out lies we learned in our youth. We needed love from our family of origin, and if we didn’t get it, we will struggle in our relationships with others and with God.
Some people assume gals only suffer from father issues, but we may struggle in our relationship with our mothers, siblings, and anyone else who deeply impacted us in our earliest years. Sometimes we don’t even realize the damage we suffer from early relationships, because we hide from the pain. We may think that admitting to the pain would dishonor these people, especially if we admit they hurt us.
We might tell ourselves we are fine, and any pain or trouble we suffered is our own fault. We may believe God wants us to deny we were hurt by parents, siblings, teachers and any other important people in our youth. I believed this lie, especially since my mom told me, “Parents never apologize to their children, and children should never point out anything the parents did wrong.” If that gal grew up in an authoritarian home or culture or attended an authoritarian church or school, she will especially deny her hurts, believing she is honoring her people.
But God does not want us to deny that others have caused us pain, and he backs this up in Scripture. For example, look at Luke 17: 3 “So watch yourselves! If another believer sins, rebuke that person; then if there is repentance, forgive.” Also Matthew 18:15, “If your brother sins against you, go and confront him.” And lest we think God does not call parents to account, look at Ephesians 6:4, “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger.”
While God calls us to honor our parents, he does not call us to follow their sins. Look at Ezek.20:4, “Will you judge them? Will you judge them, son of man? Make them know the abomination of their fathers,” and Zech.1:2, “The Lord was very angry with your fathers.” Parents sometimes sin, and when they do, their children have a right to respectfully confront them. This is a reality I could not follow with my mom, because she rebuked me when I was discussing some hurts my dad caused in my childhood. My dad did repent, but my mom let me know I should never discuss any way she had hurt me. While this crippled our relationship, God did enable me to love her for the rest of her life, albeit by not drawing as near to her as I could have if she would have allowed me to confront her about the ways she hurt me. I forgave her, but without the full reconciliation we could have had. But I have peace today, even after her death, and I love her fiercely, despite pain she caused me.
We can call out those who hurt us–family and other important people from our childhood–unless those people are dangerous or adamantly unrepentant like my mom was. Then we tell God and a safe (non-gossiping) friend about the harm those people caused.
I realize this is a painful reality for many gals who, like me, were taught lies such as denying family members’ sins. Some misquote Scripture such as, 1Peter4:8“Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins,” but those people have clipped this verse out of context. Look back at the verses before verse 8—look at verses 4b-5, “…you no longer plunge into the flood of wild and destructive things they do. So they slander you, but remember that they will have to face God, who stands ready to judge everyone, both the living and the dead.” This verse is not about ignoring sin, but about forgiving others when they repent. Never let hypocrites use Scripture against you. If you are ever puzzled when someone says something that feels condemning to your heart, please pray about it. If you have a wise Christian friend or a faithful pastor, ask them about that person’s use of Scripture. Too often people are abused in the name of the Christian faith. Jesus never abused anyone, even when he called out sinners. He told the woman caught in adultery “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more,” (John 8:11.)
Even when family members are too proud to listen to our confrontation of their sins against us, we still need to tell ourselves, God and a safe friend (or counselor if there is significant trauma.) We cannot hide this pain, because it keeps coming out in our daily living.
Too many of us (especially me) have under-estimated the importance of relating bad patterns in our current relationships to bad relationships we had in our childhood. These earlier, bad relationships taint our thinking about our current relationships. Any bad, earlier relationships trained us to interact with others according to the treatment we received with those earlier people. When others treated us poorly, they may have trained us to accept such poor treatment in our grown up years. But we often don’t recognize this poor treatment for the wrong training it is (but should not have been.)
Some rare people may walk away from bad treatment and neither accept more bad treatment, nor inflict it on others. I don’t think I have ever met anyone who fully got away without learning at least some dysfunctional behaviors.
Our society talks about father issues, so some people (like me) work on that relationship and do find some healing. Like me, they believe that once they have mostly healed from father trauma, they are fully healed. But they may have had significant, unresolved conflict with mothers, siblings, teachers, grandparents, aunts and uncles, nannies or other essential people in their early life. They may assume that only their father issues matter, and then assume they are well healed from such pain and ready to live as a confident person in healthy relationships. But the remaining unresolved relationships with family and others can still harm these gals’ (and guys’) adult relationships. I know, because this happened to me in regard to my mom and even my siblings. As God revealed this truth to me and began to help me admit to the pain, I began to recognize that some of my friends suffered from some of these repeating patterns too.
I don’t know why society places so little importance upon early childhood issues with people besides fathers. Perhaps there is an unspoken belief that mothers and siblings who did many things right should not be confronted for the things they did wrong. Perhaps they believe that admitting to the wrong deeds negates the many good things they did. But if the things they did wrong cut into us so deeply that we believe lies and live poorly, due to our false beliefs, then we must confront them. Furthermore, we do not dishonor others when we admit they hurt us. We actually welcome those people to reconcile with us. For we can never be truly close to people we deceive.
Yes, we deceive people when we deny they hurt us. Deceiving is never honoring others. It feels right, if the other person denies our pain or if the other person is forceful or proud. But it is not right, even when society insists we tell those lies. We do not need to tell the whole world about our troubles. I only share about my own parents, because they have died, and because I want to help others to heal. I tell as little as I can too, sparing my deceased parents’ memory, since my parents did many good things too.
Even if a gal is afraid (or not safe) to directly confront a family member, we must admit to ourselves and God (and if possible a discrete friend.) We need to admit to ourselves how much the bad treatment hurt. Often we need to keep on admitting this to ourselves and God so we can grieve it and express the anger, fear, confusion and sorrow and other difficult emotions when they come up. As we feel the anger, or hurt and tell God, he will comfort us. We may discover different aspects of the mistreatment that hurt us and have to grieve those too. Often we grieve over their rejection and shaming of us or their neglect. We might tell God, and then grieve in the early morning, and by midmorning we are smiling about good things in our life. Yet the next day, we may feel more pain. I promise this pain does diminish. The process of dealing with mistreatment takes time, but this process works, even if we need to work with a counselor. If we ask God to heal us, he will, but we must be patient, because the process takes time, just like scrubbing a cooked-on stain on a pot takes many attempts to get it clean. In a sense, we are scrubbing away the lies and pain until we do heal.
Many people want to avoid strong, painful feelings. They think this will ease their pain. It only makes the pain drag on for decades and dulls their ability to rejoice and enjoy life. These people (myself included) will repeat bad relationships with new people. I have done this foolish thing, and I have met many other people who did too. We must make a painful choice. Do we live a lifetime of having harsh people mistreat us, yet avoid dealing with pain from our youth? Or do we grieve that pain, and eventually find a lifetime of good relationships and joy? Facing the pain now enables us to avoid so much pain later and also enables us to feel so much joy.
I am not just suggesting this. God tells us to call out others when they sin, and God calls us to grieve and then heal. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted,” Matt.5:4. In Jeremiah 8:11 God says, “They have healed the wound of my people lightly saying ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.” The false prophets said the people were not sinning and they could be “forgiven,” without the people truly repenting of their sins. Lamentations 2:13b, “Your wound is as deep as the sea. Who can heal you?” In these cases, the people’s sickness and wounds could not be healed, because they had not confessed their sins. Yet even when we are innocent and have not sinned, we still need to confess our pain to the Lord for him to heal it too. God calls us to come to him with all of our sorrows. 1 Peter 5:6-7 “So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time he will lift you up in honor. Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.”
Please note that God does admit we have to humble ourselves to tell God about our cares, worries, sorrows and fears. I know it is humbling to say, “I am hurt. I need help.” I was told to NOT do this, and even when I did, it hurt terribly. So I know doing this is hard for people who feel proud. The healing does not happen instantly either. I am still, slowly, finding sorrows from my earliest years that I hid from myself. I have to face them, because they come with lies I believed, such as the common perfectionist lie that says, “I have to be perfect for others to love me.” People I loved hurt me, and my response was to make up these lies in my mind, in response to the hurt I felt. I cannot just “throw away the lies.” I thought I could, but I failed, over and over to throw away those lies. I had to remember the pain in relationships.
But my logical side asks God, why should I have to remember the way PEOPLE hurt me? Can’t I just change my mind if I believed lies? Can’t I just say I forgive them all and not think about those bad relationships? Then God whispers into my ear, He is a relational God. He wants to heal relationships, because he is the King of Relationships. I only heal when I look back at my past and the ways people hurt me, along with the lies I believed after that pain, and only if I bring it all to God. But somehow people are bound up in my healing, even when those people are either dead or unsafe for me to confront directly. I still need to confront the memories in my mind, and bring them to my loving God. I still have to grieve over the broken relationship with that person. I am so sorry for everyone who hates to read this. But over and over God has shown this to me, and to my friends who have healed. God has also shown me lives of people who would not heal in relationships, and over and over God has shown me the bitterness of their lives.
Please don’t take this as bad news. It is not. Some of the most joyful people I know have suffered the most. Yet these people are happy, joyful and so forgiving and full of life. This may be a hard process, but like miners digging for gold, very hard work will produce priceless treasures—in our cases, the treasures of joy and forgiveness and healing of terrible grief. God truly has good plans for our lives.
I know I have not gone into too much detail about specific aspects of the broken relationships, and I may add some more detail in ensuing posts. But I need to close for now, so I don’t over whelm my readers with too much information. Please let what I share encourage you that there is so much hope for your future. I often quote Jer.29:11, but it is a gem of a passage, even though God first spoke it to Israel: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans, to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.” Good plans are still God’s desire for you today. I am living that kind of joy, so I am offering you a promise God has been fulfilling in my life. His healing works! I enjoy good relationships with good people, and I keep my distance from the mean ones.
Have a blessed week. Thanks for joining us in this post. Please let me know if you have any questions too. I listen to the comments from my readers. I cherish you and value your concerns.