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Part 3: Who's
Responsible
In the first two articles in this series we have discussed the
reality of women who have, for whatever reason, failed their
children. Either through abuse, neglect and abandonment, or
due to poverty, mental illness or even death - these women
have not met the needs of their daughters. And we have talked
about why this is such a difficult tragedy to overcome. Today
we want to begin the first steps to resolving this heartache.
As I write these articles, I think of my own mother who worked
for many years to overcome physical abuse by her father. I
would never presume that anyone who has suffered in this way
could read a few articles I've written and everything would be
OK. I know how hard this can be. I know how long this can
take. And I know that sometimes we need some outside help as
we deal with this. If you find yourself in over your head,
please don't hesitate to find a trusted counselor in your area
that can stand with you and for you as you work to resolve
some of the hurt. My prayer is that these articles can be a
step along the way for you and that you will be encouraged in
your heart.
When I first began working with abused teenagers, I noticed an
unusual pattern. These girls had an irrational perspective of
their own responsibility, and they were making two terrible
mistakes.
First of all, they took responsibility for things that adults
had done to them when they were very small; incidents over
which they had absolutely no control.
On the other hand, these same girls would refuse to take
responsibility for their day-to-day behavior when they would
do awful things, claiming that there wasn't anything they
could have done differently.
Taking Responsibility
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I was amazed and somewhat bewildered. How could a small child
be responsible for abuse perpetrated by an older, stronger and
more knowledgeable adult? As I continued to work with them, I
began to understand that these girls felt guilty for what had
been done to them. They felt responsible for all that they had
suffered at the hands of the adults in their lives who were
supposed to be taking care of them.
There are two factors working in small children that
contribute to their sense of guilt. The first is that a child
is at a developmental stage where she is the center of her
universe. If something bad happens in her world, it has to be
about her, because of her, related to her. If Daddy looses his
job, the little boy may believe it is because he stole cookies
the day before.
The second factor is that young children still engage in
"magical thinking." A little girl might say, "I
hate you!" to a neighbor child. If the next day, that
neighbor is in a car wreck, the little girl is sure that she
caused the car wreck with her words and it is her fault.
We have all observed these two patterns in young children and
the way they respond to their world. The problem comes when we
carry our childhood thinking into adulthood.
How often have I sat in the counseling room and heard a
teenager or even an adult, say "If I had been better, my
parents wouldn't have gotten a divorce." or "If I
hadn't been so bad, my father wouldn't have molested me."
or "If I had not broken that lamp, my parents wouldn't
have had so many money problems."
It is important to recognize that the hurt your mother caused
you when you were little is not your fault. If your mother was
abusive, neglectful, disrespectful or even if she died young,
that was not about you. That was about her. Easy to say, hard
to put in our hearts. But this error in thinking is just that
- an error. And the Bible gives us instructions in this area.
We must recognize thinking like a child and put a stop to it.
I Corinthians 13:11 says
"When I was a child,
I talked like a child, I
thought like a child,
I reasoned like a child.
When I became a man,
I put childish ways
behind me."
Not Taking Responsibility
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And I've seen the same abused teenager who felt guilty for her
own abuse slap another teenager and refuse to believe that she
was to blame.
As adults, we must take responsibility for our own adult
actions - even if they are a result of childhood abuse. Taking
control of our present day life seems to be just as difficult
as giving up the guilt that doesn't belong to us. It is so
much easier to say, "I can't help doing this; it's just
the way I am" or "I wish I wasn't so hateful, but my
mother was hateful and I'm just like her."
Wrong.
You CAN help what you are doing and you CAN change the way you
talk, act, think and treat other people.
2 Corinthians 5:17 says
"Therefore, if any
man be in Christ,
he is a new creation;
old things are passed
away;
behold, all things are
become new."
Philippians 4:13 says
"I can do all things
through Christ
who strengthens me."
If you do something wrong, admit to yourself and to God that
you are using your past as an excuse to continue acting badly.
And ask God to forgive you.
With God's help and guidance, you can make changes in yourself
that you never thought possible.
When I am trying to resolve something or figure things out, it
always helps me to talk to someone else because I usually need
to hear myself say things out loud. You may want to enlist the
aid of a close friend, your pastor or a professional
counselor.
I want to offer one word of caution to you. If you are working
on something that happened in your past, be careful that you
do not get bogged down and talk about the past over and over
and over just for the sake of reliving it without doing your
best to resolve it and get past it. In other words, don't
rehearse the past.
I know a woman who had been mistreated as a child. She
constantly reviewed the mistreatment and discussed it often.
Each retelling seemed to make her bitter and more angry.
One day a friend reminded me of a wrong that had been done to
me in my first marriage. I honestly did not remember the event
and I was glad to be able to forget. At the time, I realized
that I could remember that old hurt if I chose to, but that
God had given me the grace to forget it and move on.
Philippians 3:12-13 says
"Not that I have
already obtained all this,
or have already been made
perfect,
but I press on to take
hold of that
for which Christ Jesus
took hold of me.
Brothers, I do not
consider myself
yet to have taken hold of
it.
"But one thing I do:
Forgetting what is behind
and straining toward what
is ahead."
There is something ahead for you. Remember our New Year's
verse? God has plans for your future and they don't include
bitterness, anger, and anxiety. They do include peace,
fulfillment, joy and love.
With the Apostle Paul you may have to do some straining toward
what is ahead. It may involve some hard work to get there.
But I truly believe that regardless of your past and how you
were treated as a child, God has something for you. He can
help lift the guilt for things that were beyond your control
as a child. And He can help you see what you can control now
so that you can take responsibility and, with His grace, begin
to resolve.
I pray that this might be a beginning for some of you; for
others a continuation of your work in progress. Next week we
will have more thoughts on healing the wounds caused by a bad
mother.
With all my heart,
Lillian
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