Posted on by Abe Austin

Deeper Love- Parental Love

Could You Love Your Son if He Were Gay?)

One of the most common ways that people have expressed disbelief to me that I could both love a person and disagree with their lifestyle, is to have them say, “Well what if your son turned out to be gay?”

But I do not find this a difficult question at all. The simple truth is that if one of my children announced to me that he or she was gay, I would still be just as opposed to that lifestyle and still love them just as much. Anyone that questions a parent’s ability to love a child who chooses a different path betrays that they know very little of paternal love.

What is more, those who ask this question don’t seem to realize that they don’t even believe its implication. The question implies that you can’t love your child unless you approve and accept of all they do. To that I say, “Could you still love your son if he got a girl pregnant in High School? Would you have to prove that love by now approving of teenage pregnancy? Could you still love your son if he got arrested for driving under the influence? Would you have to prove that love by now approving of drunk driving?” Of course you would still love your child, and of course you could do so without approving of all their behavior.

Loved Even When Bad)

Another important aspect of paternal love is its dependability. Children of good parents who hold strong convictions know that their father and mother’s love is sure, a reliable foundation that can be built on. If I were to uproot my core beliefs just to make my child happy, then they wouldn’t really know who I was anymore, and my love would only provide a shallow foundation, and they couldn’t depend on it.

Children need to know that their parents’ love is rooted in something deep that can never be lost, not that the parent relates to them out of fear, constantly shifting their ground to avoid losing the relationship.

If my child did something deeply wrong, and I shifted ground to approve of that behavior, then I would be depriving my child of one of the greatest lessons of love that there is and teaching him something incredibly destructive instead. By my saying, “I will have to redefine ‘good’ so that I can keep loving you,” I am teaching that only the good can be loved. That lie causes incredible damage in children. Think how much more powerful of a lesson I could teach by holding to my principles and my love. That says to my child, “You can be loved no matter what, even when you are bad.“

If we never receive love from those that think that you are wrong, we will never understand that even the wrong can be loved. We will never have hope when we fall short. We will never believe that we can be saved after doing something damnable.

There is a reason why God has spoken to us His truth and His commandments alongside His love and His care. The scriptures show us the example of a parent who will not compromise His standard for us, but who will not stop loving us either. That is the love that can be trusted. That is the love can be built on like a rock. That is the love that saves.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Encouraging vs Demoralizing

Part of parenting is inviting our kids to become better, to challenge them beyond their limits so that they grow and know that they can grow. At the same time, we also need to be careful that we don’t put unrealistic or ill-fitting expectations on them that can breed resentment or demoralize them. It’s a fine line to walk, and worth considering how it can be managed. In fact, it is worth considering how God, Himself, manages to walk it with us so that we can learn from His example.

As I’ve pondered these questions, the answer that has come to mind is that it all comes down to how well one knows their child. Not how well they know who they wish their child was, but how well they know who the child actually is. God is so good at getting the best out of us because His knowledge of us runs straight to our core. He even states that, “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee,” (Jeremiah 1:5). He has a perfect understanding of our trajectory and can run through it to a point that lays naturally ahead of us, saying “this is who you were born to become.”

The mistake that too many earthly parents make is that we already have our child’s trajectory determined in our hearts before we even met them. We have chosen an arbitrary point of our own making, and we still require the child to meet it.

Put another way, whereas God holds up a vision of the child as his genuine best self, we too often hold up a vision of a made-up person that the child is not aligned with and will only hurt himself in trying to become. This latter approach sends a message of, “this is who you are not, and that’s a problem.”

Since God already holds the perfect perspective of each child’s natural trajectory and potential, we can never come to better vision for our child than His. Our ability to lead our child correctly will be entirely based on our own alignment with God. It will be by standing in the place where He is that we will have the proper perspective to see how to make our children flourish and not be discouraged.

Posted on by Abe Austin

What We Need

I had a tender moment yesterday with my three-year-old daughter. She had an ear infection and my wife had scheduled an appointment to go and get a prescription, but in the meantime she was irritable and sad. I had a few minutes of break from work, and I saw her moaning on the couch and asked her if she would like me to hold her. She nodded, so I sat down, put her on my lap, wrapped my arms around her, and gently rocked back-and-forth. She gradually started to breathe more deeply, relaxed into my chest, and stopped her fussing. She was calm and content in her daddy’s arms. I have learned from past experiences that it is also helpful in these moments to show some attention to the little details, such as noticing if her fingers are dirty and meticulously cleaning them with a washcloth, one-by-one.

The thing that stood out to me from this most precious moment was that I didn’t even resolve her underlying problem in the slightest! I couldn’t hurry up her doctor’s appointment, and her ear infection wasn’t reduced in any way by my holding and rocking her, but she was comforted still the same.

I realized that it is very much the same with me. I have had sacred moments where I was able to let go of everything else and just be held by my Heavenly Father. I have felt connected to Him as He showed awareness and attention to the littlest of details, washing my hands meticulously and methodically. And when all was said and done, He usually didn’t take away the issue that was originally distressing me, and there was still a process ahead of me to overcome it, but that was okay, because I felt comforted and cared for in the moment, and that was all I needed to keep moving forward.

Posted on by Abe Austin

To Live Freely: Part Five

Review)

In my last post I started considering whether it was a viable strategy to help someone live a richer, happier life by causing them to believe a falsehood. The idea was that if we can discredit this approach, then what remains is to live a life founded on the truth.

We discussed the example of a husband concealing an affair from his wife, in order to spare her the pain of it. The conclusion was that this sets her up to do things that actively work against her, undermining her own stability in life as she extends her dependence on a tenuous marriage. A key takeaway was that this foundation of a lie leaves the wife in a reality that is increasingly detached from the truth, resulting in horrible pain when, and if, she suddenly falls back to the real world.

Today I wanted to consider a new example, though, one where the parents of an adopted child lead him to believe that he is their biological son. The issue of a painful return to reality certainly applies to this case as well, we have all heard the stories of a child who only learns in their adulthood that they were adopted, and how that revelation was a terrible shock to them.

But this particular example also brings to mind another inherent danger in setting another person on a foundation of mistruth, one that must not go overlooked.

Covering a Lie With a Lie)

What is the reason why the parents wants their child to be believe he is their biological son? In virtually every case it is genuinely meant as a kindness. They want their child to feel that he is no less than any other, that he is just as valid and real a part of their family as he possibly could be. In their hearts he is the same as a biological son, so they want him to live as if that were the case.

But why does the child need to feel that he is a biological son to feel equal to one? What harm is there if he knows that he is adopted? It is because the parents know that there are those in the world that view adopted children as lesser. They know that some people would hold that fact against him and make him feel shamed for it. They want to protect him from such unkindness.

But here is the moment where the twisting of the truth turns back to bite those who would wrest it. The parents are actually perpetuating the very stigma that they refute. There is a cycle here where parents hide the adoption from the child because the world would use it against them, but one of the chief reasons why the world thinks there is something wrong with being adopted is because it is treated so secretively by parents. If the child does uncover the fact that he is adopted at some point, what does his parents’ concealing of that fact suggest to him? It implies that his adoption really was shameful, that it was a nasty, secret thing that had to be hidden. If his origin really was just as valid any other, then why was there a need to conceal it? There is nothing that marks something as an object of shame more than trying to hide it.

I do realize that parents may not want to fight that battle against society with their own child. Let someone else challenge that stigma and pave the way for accepting all children as equal. But the fact still remains that by not challenging the problem directly, they are only making it worse. So yes, the parents were entirely well-meaning, but as I have mentioned before, well-meaning intentions do not necessarily equate to moral behavior.

If the parents really feel that there is no difference between a biological child and an adopted one, then they ought to be able to openly talk about the truth of the situation and reinforce in their child that there is no need to feel ashamed about that truth. And if parents secretly do feel that there is a difference, but they don’t want to admit to that, then once again they are trying to extract happiness and meaningfulness out of a lie. They need to consider what is real and what is true, or at least what their best understanding of it is, and then they should live in accordance with it.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Addiction as an Ally: Part One

Talking to the Addiction)

When I was about a year into my initial recovery process our group therapist told us to write a letter to our addiction as if it was an actual person. The next time we met we read those letters out loud, and there was a great deal of anger and hatred directed towards the addiction. Most of us made it abundantly clear how much we had been hurt by the addiction, and how much we would wish it could be hurt in return, if only it were a living thing.

Then our group therapist said something that caught me by surprise. He advised us to redo the exercise, but to tone down the hate this time. We were here to say goodbye to the addiction, not to rage against it. In fact, he said, through all his years of doing this work he had come to appreciate the intentions of the addiction, even if he didn’t condone its behavior.

I had a very hard time processing what he said in that moment, it just seemed too outlandish to accept. Over the years, though, I think I have come to understand what he was getting at. The fact is that our addictions are actually trying to help us. To be sure, they absolutely do not help us, but they are trying to. Our addictions arise due to a terrible grief or stress in our lives, and they are an attempt our instincts make to cope with that pain. Yes, they cope with the pain in a way that only causes more pain down the road, and that is why we have to stop them, but their intention to free us from our anguish isn’t in-and-of-itself evil. How true, then, is the expression that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” That quote matches the addict perfectly!

My therapist was trying to help us reach the point where our letters could say in essence, “Addiction, I see what you were trying to do, and I can even appreciate your intentions. Thank you for trying…but now I know that your methods don’t work. In fact, they only make the problem worse. Also, you have not been willing to listen to me when I tried to reason with you, so now I’m here to tell you that I’m cutting things off entirely. I’m not going to entertain your suggestions any more, and I don’t want to hear from you again. This is good-bye.”

Firm and decisive, but not hateful.

As I suggested, I wasn’t able to see this perspective at first. I had spent too long hating my addiction to give it any sort of acknowledgement whatsoever. The more I worked the program, though, the more I had to deal with the fact that my addiction was inseparably connected with my young-child self, who didn’t have the wherewithal to deal with his great sorrows in a healthy manner. I couldn’t bring myself to hate seven-year-old me for being ignorant, for being duped, for just being a child who didn’t understand. Not to say that my young-child self is entirely one-and-the-same as the addict self, but they are inextricably linked. One came about because of the other, and so much of my addictive acting out, even as a fully-grown adult, has been initiated by my childlike impulse-driven mind.

Growing Up)

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. - 1 Corinthians 13:11

Our addiction is a sign that part of us has been trapped in our childhood. We have remained little boys and girls in the area of how we deal with our emotions. Every little child becomes a worse form of him- or herself when they are overwhelmed with emotions that they cannot fully process. They become tyrants, they become liars, they become gluttons.

Ideally, the child will be guided in these moments by a kind and understanding adult. One that can show them healthy outlets for frustration, support them through overwhelming situations, and reaffirm to them their true nature. They need an adult who won’t hate them for having started to go astray, but who will love them back to being who they really are.

Often we only became addicts because we didn’t receive that sort of wise and loving care back then. Instead we were left to figure things out on our own, and the result was that we let an addiction into our lives. The addiction promised us control over our painful feelings. We probably had some instinct that what it enticed us to do was wrong, but also we were young and easily seduced by the pleasures that it offered.

Now, though, we are an adult. We have greater perspective and higher reasoning, if we choose to use it. That small child is still inside of us, and we have the chance to help it…or to aggravate it further. When we direct hate at our addict-self, we inevitably also hate the overwhelmed child that is locked up with it. What’s more, by engaging in these angry outbursts we are only giving up our mature self to lean further into our childish nature, thus ensuring that there still isn’t an adult present to help with the situation.

The true adult would have the maturity to forgive. The true adult would , forgive the child for being scared and not knowing what to do, forgive the child who having made an ignorant mistake, forgive the child for letting the addiction in. Not only would the true adult be able to forgive the child, they could even forgive their addiction.

I absolutely understand if that notion seems incredulous right now. I wasn’t able to come to terms with it at first either. I had to mature in my recovery considerably before I was able to finally say, “Addiction, I get it. I don’t approve of what you did…but I see why you thought you had to. You were wrong, and continue to be wrong, but I forgive you for that. I’m not going to hate you anymore.” I have been able to say that, and then I have parted ways with my addiction in peace.

Or, well, we sort of parted ways. As any addict in recovery knows, the boundaries we set with the addiction are tested many times over. My addiction has snuck through the back door in different guises that I wasn’t expecting. I was frustrated and didn’t know what to do. I started to have a sense that the addiction was never going to really leave. It was probably going to always be there in some capacity or another. And as I came to accept this fact, I realized that I could actually have a partnership with my addiction and still make use of it. Now I realize that might not sound like a very good thing, but I don’t mean it in the way that you’re probably thinking! Come back tomorrow and I’ll explain myself further!

Posted on by Abe Austin

You Should Have Cried: Part Two

In my last post I discussed the therapeutic process of revisiting childhood trauma and mourning the things that might have never been fully processed at the time. In many cases this means finally shedding the tears that had been bottled up for far, far too long.

But I’ve been in therapy groups, and I’ve certainly seen a resistance to this process, particularly among the men who feel like openly weeping is unmanly. Is there a validity to this sense of stoicism, or is it a misalignment in our society? Well, today we will address this question by looking at the example of the greatest man that ever lived: Jesus Christ.

Become as a Little Child)

The primary reason why many feel ashamed to show their unbridled emotion is that they want to be mature and composed. They don’t want to appear as a little child. But what was it that Jesus said to his disciples about little children?

And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, and said, Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. - Matthew 18:2-4

Humble yourself as a little child. Give up your pride and your show of false strength. Stop trying to prove that you’ve got this all taken care of and let yourself admit that you were really hurt.

And in case you aren’t sure that Jesus’s declarations applied to matters of showing one’s weakness and hurt, let us consider another example that he gave in a moment of great distress. In the Garden of Gethsemane, when he was bowed under the pain of the atonement and the anxiety of the coming crucifixion, this was his response:

And he went forward a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt. - Mark 14:35-36

Jesus feels scared and hurt, and he falls on his face and calls to his “Abba.” Abba is a Hebrew word for “father,” and it denotes both intimacy and submission, something like “daddy” and “sir” all rolled into one. “Daddy/sir, you can do anything, will you take this hurt from me? But I’ll go through with it if you ask.”

Jesus has been many things to his followers. He has been called “master,” and “teacher,” and “prophet.” But to his God, Jesus is “as a little child.” Vulnerable, open about his pain, asking for help, and submissive.

Later still, when Jesus was upon the cross, he cried out in a moment of agony:

And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? - Mark 15:34

Previously, when raised upon the cross, Jesus had been magnanimous to his killers: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” – Luke 23:34. He had been considerate to the well-being of his mother: “He saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son! Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home” – John 19:26-27. But to his God, once again, Jesus was a little child, crying out and asking why he was alone.

To Every Thing There is a Season)

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; - Ecclesiastes 3:1, 4

The words and example of Jesus Christ perfectly line up with these words of wisdom in Ecclesiastes. Yes, there is a time for stoicism. There is a time for power. There is a time for projecting strength and not weakness. One has only to consider Jesus chasing out the vendors in the temple with a whip to see that there is even a time for anger!

But also, there is a time for weeping, mourning, and being broken. One of the great examples of Christ, which too often goes overlooked, was how he filled the full measure of human emotion. He showed all of his feelings, at the appropriate time. Reserved when he ought to be, confident when he ought to be, distraught when he ought to be, and pained when ought to be. He assured his disciples that there was nothing to fear (Mark 4:39-40), but he also wept at the death of Lazarus (John 11:35).

To claim that you ought not feel or show an entire sector of the emotional spectrum because you are a man, is to claim that that you are more of a man than Jesus. God did not give us our feelings with the intent that we would ignore half of them, all of them were given for our good. Yes, they need to be governed and managed at times, but that does not mean suppressed out of existence!

Previously, I presented the mourning of old trauma as a matter of emotional therapy, and it is, but it is also a matter of spiritual significance as well. We cannot be the full person that God intended for us to be until we truly embrace the full person, broken inner child included.

I know by experience that Christ calls each of us to step into the hurts of our past. Not only that, he asks us to step into those places with him. He goes with us into those defeated places, he asks us to open up the hurt and let the tears flow, and then he applies his healing balm and saves the lost soul within. Mourning our old wounds, with our Savior by our side, is arguably the most sacred act that we will ever do. May we all go through this beautiful process, so that every lost child can be healed and be saved.

Posted on by Abe Austin

You Should Have Cried: Part One

A Five-Minute Tragedy)

This morning I was sitting in my living room when I heard the sound of collisions in quick succession and the cries of my two-year-old daughter. She had fallen halfway down the staircase, and now she lay in a heap, physically tender and emotionally broken.

As you might expect, for the next several minutes she was inconsolable, wrapped in the arms of her mother, wailing as the tears streamed from her face. There was no real damage to her physically, but the terror of falling and the momentary pain had greatly unnerved her.

And then, all at once, she stopped crying, bounced out of her mother’s arms, and went about her day like nothing had happened!

This, of course, is common in the life of a young child. A moment of pain or of fright brings them crashing down, but after a good cry they’re perfectly fine and will soon forget that anything ever happened. One might be tempted to say that this whole thing is silly, likely they are getting all worked up about something that didn’t matter at all, but really this is a sign that their emotions are operating exactly how they should. Being able to stop and have a cry is the child’s way of quickly and effectively processing the trauma, and then they are able to leave it in the past where it belongs.

Unwept Tears)

Sometimes, however, children don’t cry when they ought to. The tears well up in their eyes, but they blink them back and power forward. The primary reason for not crying is that the child doesn’t feel that it is safe to cry, and this situation might occur more frequently than you’d expect.

Consider the example of a child lost at the supermarket. They may feel terribly scared and alone, but many of them won’t actually cry about it until they are back in the arms of a loved parent, which is the only place that they feel safe enough to let the tears come.

Another example would be when the child is surrounded by antagonists. A child that is being bullied at school will often feel that they have been humiliated enough without showing their aggressors the tears in their eyes as well.

There may also be social pressures not to cry. Young boys will feel like they must become stoic and reserved, like men. Though they may suffer a considerable ordeal, such as being in a dangerous car accident, if they don’t see their father shed any tears about it, they will feel that they shouldn’t either. Girls have their own form of this, too, feeling that they must stuff their feelings down in order to not make a scene. They will feel it is their responsibility to not add drama to an already tense situation, to hold the peace and not rock the boat.

There are many other examples that could be given of times and places that a child’s psyche knows that it ought to cry, but they don’t because it feels unsafe or wrong to them to do so. Thus, they are at odds with their own self, suppressing their nature under a show of control.

The Work of Therapy)

I once had a therapist who would quote that “the wound un-mourned is a wound unhealed.” Most of us don’t realize that when we suppressed our tears as children, we essentially covered up the wound without ever treating it. Just like physical wounds, emotional wounds can get infested. Infection will grow within them, and then that infection will come out in odd, seemingly unrelated placed. Many times, we believe that there isn’t a reason behind the bad things that we do as an adult, but after we revisit and mourn our childhood trauma, we suddenly find the motivation to do the wrong thing has evaporated away. Our emotions are like a prairie dog village, with many seemingly unrelated openings at the top, but a whole network of interconnected tunnels hiding down below.

One of the greatest works of therapy is identifying those unwept, unhealed moments of trauma from our past, going back to them, and crying for them like we should have at the time. With the help of a counselor, one has revealed to them the fact that the scared, hurt child is still very alive and well inside. They find that child, weep with it, and bring it to a place of safety.

Of course, I have seen many men in my recovery groups that feel extremely uncomfortable with getting emotional. We are grown men, and we’re convinced that crying is unbecoming of us. But what we must remember is that it isn’t necessarily us who needs to cry, it’s the young boy inside of us. All we’re doing is letting our body be a vessel for that child to get out what it has kept locked away for so long. In this sort of context and for this sort of purpose, tears could never be more dignified.

And, when we do let ourselves go through the full mourning process, just like my two-year-old daughter we’ll suddenly bounce back up and feel such a lightness and relief. We don’t realize just how much our old hurts were holding us down until we suddenly feel the weight of them sliding off our backs. And all things considered, it is a relatively easy thing to do. I never ceased to be amazed that a hurt, held onto for more than twenty years, can be released in only twenty seconds.

But what about the words of scripture? Do they support returning to the state of a little child? Do they approve of such vulnerable, open-hearted weeping? Come back tomorrow as we take a look at the words of Christ, himself, and the example that he set with his very own life.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Genesis 46:4

4 I will go down with thee into Egypt; and I will also surely bring thee up again: and Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes.

After God’s declaration that Israel will finally become a great nation in Egypt, it might be easy to overlook the two additional promises given next, but they are both significant and touching in their own ways.

For the first one, Jacob may not realize how important it is that God commits not only to “go down with thee into Egypt,” but also to “surely bring thee up again.” Jacob may not know, but God does, that while in Egypt the Israelites will become enslaved. They will become a great nation, but one that is subservient to another.

The Israelites will be great distressed in that time, and they will plead for deliverance. Then how meaningful will this seemingly innocuous pledge to “bring thee up again” become? As the Israelites in bondage review their records, they will realize that God was promising to deliver them since even before the need for deliverance existed. The promise was for them far more than for Jacob.

The following promise is most definitely for Jacob, though, which is that “Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes.” This expression means “to close the eyes of one who has died.” God is promising to Jacob that what the other sons have reported is true. Joseph really is alive, and Jacob is going to spend the rest of his life with him, for Joseph will outlive him.

Many parents that have had to bury a child express what a strange twist of the natural order it is to outlive the next generation. We may want to live a long life, but not at the cost of burying our own children. Jacob had to mourn the death of his child once before, but now he is being reassured that the natural order is being restored, and the returned child will continue past himself. This is a very tender promise from God, one that shows His keen understanding of the human heart.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Thought for the Day- A Child to God

To the world
we may need to make ourselves
strong and wise and fearless

But to God
we must always be
His vulnerable, little child

Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Genesis 35:16-20

16 And they journeyed from Beth-el; and there was but a little way to come to Ephrath: and Rachel travailed, and she had hard labour.

17 And it came to pass, when she was in hard labour, that the midwife said unto her, Fear not; thou shalt have this son also.

18 And it came to pass, as her soul was in departing, (for she died) that she called his name Ben-oni: but his father called him Benjamin.

19 And Rachel died, and was buried in the way to Ephrath, which is Beth-lehem.

20 And Jacob set a pillar upon her grave: that is the pillar of Rachel’s grave unto this day.

A very somber end to the story of Rachel. It is particularly sobering how childbearing, usually a source of great joy for a mother, was such a source of travail in Rachel’s life. First, she was unable to have any children for several years, causing her to envy her sister Leah. Then she miraculously had one child, Joseph, but then ceased again for a while. Here, at last, she was able to give birth to a second…but that proved to be the death of her. Her grief is apparent in how she named the child Ben-oni, which translates to “son of my sorrow.”

That is a very heavy title for an innocent child to bear, but Jacob set for him another title: Benjamin, which means “son of the right hand.” I cannot help but wonder what sort of special companionship Joseph and Benjamin shared, the only two half-orphaned brothers born of Rachel. It seems a difficult situation for starting one’s life, but perhaps it was necessary for their development. Each of them grew to be the most faithful of sons.

I wonder also how her death affected Jacob, who still had many years to go without his most beloved companion. We do not know exactly how long she and Jacob had together before the end. It is clear that they were married after Jacob had served Laban seven years, and that Jacob served Laban twenty years in all, but we aren’t sure how long Jacob was in Shalem before travelling to Beth-el, and how long he was in Beth-el before this fatal delivery occurred. Still, it seems likely that their earthly union was somewhere in the range of fifteen-to-twenty years. He likely had many years yet to go, but he would always see a living reminder of her in their two sons.