A Parent’s Prayer
Children don’t understand how much their parents love them. How else does one explain the energy and time that mothers and fathers are prepared to spend on their child as it follows the path from birth to adulthood, often in the face of endless rebellion? Along the way, we learn that our offspring are not our clones, but that they are individuals in their own right with dreams, ambitions, morals and thinking that can be totally foreign to our ways and norms.
Thus it was love for my daughter that resulted in my initial response being surprising calmness at hearing from my wife that she had discovered our girl using marijuana. I did not immediately jump to the conclusion that she was indeed smoking pot, but was scrambling around in my mind for alternatives. This exemplified my approach as father to her – a constant run around looking for excuses for the often inexcusable. Yet again, I was proven clearly wrong.
Her behaviour over the years has placed immense pressure on familial relationships, especially between my wife and me. I was constantly backing my daughter and asking for more time to “explain to her” and “persuade her” and “negotiate with her”. I became the go-between, the hamburger in the patty in a war that has taken its toll on everyone. In the process, most of the attention was focused on her at the expense of her siblings.
After finally accepting the fact that she had been caught out, my calmness changed to a mix of immense sadness and anger. Here was another example of a decision that she had made all on her own, to go against our express wishes. Here she disappointed us yet again in a situation where she had all the freedom to express her active choices. Her parents weren’t around to block her; something she has always railed against. She constantly demanded more freedom and yet – when she was on her own – she made stupid decisions.
The fact that my wife and I were emotionally exhausted by the constant challenge that our daughter posed to our authority made the decision to send her to Healing Wings an easy one. It might sound trite to say that decisions like this one might save lives, but I’m convinced that they do.
In the process, battered relationships are healed. Years of emotional abuse and pain are salved by the God-centric work done at Healing Wings. My wife and I pray each day for our children. Each day we ask that the Holy Spirit work mightily in the lives of our children on that day.
Our prayers have been more than answered in the case of our girl at Healing Wings. We can see it in her eyes and hear it in her voice. We note it in her step and her ruddy complexion, her excitement at hearing from her family, her desire to mend broken fences, to pay it back to her community and to resume her studies and plan for the future.
God is Great, All the Time.
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