Tina Webb's Blog, page 6

Parenting From fear

Looking into yesterday can be painful but productive. At least my youngest two children will have a mom who can parent from wisdom instead of through fear.

Twenty-five years ago, I was a young married woman having children every 2.5 years. I had no idea the intricate fear structure in my soul that influenced my parenting.

As I look back, I see myself – picking up my kids from the rare occasion of having a babysitter, quizzing them and analyzing their body language for the first five minutes to try to discern if something bad happened. Subconsciously, I micromanaged their childhood moments so that they’d never, ever experience sadness or pain.

My concerns were legitimate. I clearly remembered many of my childhood experiences and was in the process of cleaning myself from the unhealthy residue of those experiences. Statistics show that bullying and peer-to-peer sexual abuse is increasing. But there is a difference between parenting from peace-filled wisdom and fear-based projection.

I’m a bit in shock as I sit a few months from turning fifty, and realize that no matter how successful my four young adults are today, that success is a product of the gracious and healing hand of God. Although most people would have never known it, and my husband and I certainly didn’t at the time, but one child dealt with suicidal thoughts as a nine-year-old, another experienced tormenting dreams that paralyzed them physically while they slept, and another dealt with a huge amount of self-rejection at age five.

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But I get it. I’ve read online articles, books and blogs about everything from epigenetics to early child development and I know now that my own early trauma was not only passed down to my children, but that it caused a bent in my God-focused journey. A bent inward, like an arrow jabbing at the deep wounds in my soul. Each child’s birth was an unconscious trigger. I didn’t realize that my motherly effort to “save” them from pain was a symptom of my own need to be healed.

We live in a broken world. We have to face the reality of the war zone we were born into. One way that Jesus destroys the works of the devil is through us overcoming struggle and hurts and wounds with His help, not in our own strength. I can’t keep my kids from every situation that will make them cry, but I can weep with them. I can’t monitor every friendship, but I can teach them how to choose wisely and pray for them. I can teach them about the world-brutal but beautiful, hate-filled and divisive, yet filled with people who will genuinely accept them for the content of their character.

Most of all I can point them to Jesus. He fills. He restores. He heals and teaches anyone who comes to Him.

Psalm 91: 14-16 “Because he has loved Me, therefore I will deliver him;
I will set him securely on high, because he has known My name.
“He will call upon Me, and I will answer him;
I will be with him in [e]trouble;
I will rescue him and honor him.
“With [f]a long life I will satisfy him
And [g]let him see My salvation.”

In another post, I will discuss why the Bible calls children, His “arrows”. What a mighty purpose they have!

Who Let the Dogs Out?

This post was originally published August 2017. https://wordpress.com/view/myfatherscrown.com

Anger is in style. For so long the urge to rigorously emote an often justifiable yet violent sense of injustice has been suppressed in human souls. We are seeing the eruption and the ash falling on all of us.

What happened?

Perhaps it was that the hurting never felt like they were sincerely heard and understood. At the same time maybe the gates of hell have opened allowing demons to sniff out these wounds like rats sniff out garbage.

The violence and chaos that that has presented itself ever since 2001 seems new, but it’s not. It’s been here all the time. It was muzzled but the muzzles have been chewed off. Forgiveness and mercy is passé.

I believe the problem was one of suppression. Social etiquette taught us to smile but hide behind our manners. The hurt and anger was always there, popping up in jokes and funny jabs, caricatures and stereotypes. Comedians gave us permission to laugh when we wanted to cry or yell. No one is laughing now. Hate has come out of hiding.

Some whites sincerely didn’t like the end of slavery, go figure. They really believe that they are being taken over by other ethnic groups. I don’t get it, but it’s true. They’ve suppressed their anger and fear until now. Likewise some black and other minorities are tired of not only systematic and institutional racism, but also of individual encounters with these white people. Some of these white and black Americans, have stayed segregated and have no one of another race to call friend. Some don’t want that blessing.  They just want to unleash their suppressed anger.

1 John 2:11 But he who hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

If we truly believe that humanity is a band of brothers of every tribe and tongue, then there is a disconnect between our belief and reality. While there are those in our present day who would say that some humans are genetically inferior than others, most of us shake our heads and ignore their utter stupidity and warped need for self-adulation.

The problem is that most of us, as a band of human brothers have forgotten what it means to acknowledge the harsh truth of sin and the valid yet difficult answer of forgiveness. We’ve also forgotten that in our hearts all of us have hated at one time or another and that in truth, we are no better than our filial enemies.

Sin is also passé but there is no other reason that a darkened heart will stomp into a city, full of hate and vengeance, bringing fear and disarray to the residents. There is no other reason for people to loot and destroy their own communities or kill another person because they look or believe differently.  Sin. Sin is evil.

Evil is really evil and surely, around us all lurch invisible creatures ready and willing to take advantage of our imperfect sense of humanity.

My mother answered a post that my husband wrote with these words: “Mostly what we see is “PREJUDICE” — something we all as humans have. We PRE-JUDGE PEOPLE. We connote things about people that we don’t know, from a distance. Prejudice in its highest levels dovetails into Racism. But for most of us, prejudging is part of life and is eradicated when we get to know people individually and see each person’s own uniqueness. Prejudice is in our DNA in order to maintain our safety until we know who the person is. It is Stranger Anxiety based on outside appearances. It is understandable. Prejudice can be defeated by conversation and community — by putting on someone else’s skin and walking around in it. (Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird.) Prejudice is solvable in communities, in families, and in the individual. Because Love never fails.”

So much truth exists in these statements. This past Sunday, I sat in a row with my husband, son and daughter, as well as two of my dearest friends. One is white the other is Latino. I am black. We get along great. I’m sure we get looks when we are in public. Three races. Three sisters in Christ.  Love never fails. In the sermon, my pastor reminded us that Jesus is the image of the invisible God. This is a great truth to dwell on. The fact that He chose to put on human skin and live as a human should bring us all a sense of wonder and realization that God truly desires to understand and know us. He created us in his image. He made us breathing souls that need each other to prosper. When we see a stranger, we must struggle to remind ourselves, despite the normal sense of self-protection and subconscious pre-judging, to acknowledge that this stranger is also made in the image of God and therefore deserves respect and dignity.

The challenge comes when we are wronged. When I was young, my mother used to say, “The pot can’t call the kettle black”. If you are not familiar with this statement, let me explain: both the pot and the kettle are black; made from the same materials. When someone hates us and boosts in their hatred, should we feel the pain of the intentional wound. Yes! However, in our pain, we must find the courage to acknowledge our own past or present sinful attitudes and realize that these haters are trapped in the cell of sin. That’s all it is. It’s painful but it’s the treachery of living in the dark. They can’t see. They are blinded by their sin. We’ve all been blinded by sin before.

Forgiveness won’t put these brutal dogs back in their cages but it will certainly keep us from being caught in their traps. In our nation, people have the right to speak whatever they want. I honor that right. It allows me to write a public post and mention the Christian term “sin.” However, when violence ensues, then justice must happen. When a hater becomes a shooter or when a protester becomes a looter, they’ve crossed the line and punishment is their just reward. But you and I, can stay free from their jail cell by not suppressing… but acknowledging our own pain and anger, and then forgiving them for their evil intents. Forgiveness is not forgetting. The Bible says that we can be angry and not sin. There is an anger that is not sinful. I believe it’s undergirded by forgiveness. Forgiveness unleashes us from the demonic traps of the haters. Forgiveness is accepting the reality of their blindness.  Forgiveness cures. Forgiveness reminds us that we too, have needed to be forgiven.

Visit me on https://tinawebb.net/

Overcoming Adversaries

The kids were naive. They didn’t understand how their joking could hurt my son. Calling him names that highlighted a post-surgery physical challenge had become a past time for them until he mentioned it to me. I addressed it immediately with their parents. The name-calling never happened again and thankfully my son’s physical challenge resolved after five months, after the healing of the surgery was complete.

Lots of hugs and prayers helped him acknowledge the hurt but not be overtaken by it. My husband and I embraced the opportunity to instruct our son how to forgive and not identify with “labels”. That was only part of the work. We also needed to forgive these kids, who would continue to be a regular part of our lives. My son’s experience made me reflect on my own childhood and being called names like “Oreo girl” by my black friends or having a white teacher ask me if I put toothpaste in my hair to make it so shiny. Unfortunately, a few times I used my hurt to wound others. Calling them names made me feel strong. Whether we have been the victim or we are the reformed bully, God has healing and restoration for each of us.

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Honestly and vulnerability can heal families and communities. We should acknowledge how our own opinions, habits, and words have hurt someone but we realized it and changed; how a challenge suppressed us but we rose up and out from it; how life tested us, but we overcame. We must find moments of victory or overcoming that can be used to encourage someone else. We must humbly acknowledge a time or an instance where “we were the problem” and consider the process through which we became so self-aware, that we allowed someone else or divine power to change our hearts and minds.

We must believe that God is good and wants good for all people, even those that we call evil. He doesn’t want to bless their evil intentions and works, but he wants to endow them with the ability to know right from wrong and to discern light from darkness. He ultimately wants them to have a story to share that will bring life to those around them. This is why Jesus told his disciples to “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you and pray for those who spitefully use you.” (Matthew 5:44)

Sometimes conflict with someone continues so long that we believe God doesn’t hear us or can’t change our oppressors. Maybe we are hurting so much that we just don’t have the compassion to pray for them. If we can envision Him hugging us or weeping with us and if we recall our own failures, our graciousness will arise.

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Robert Frost wrote these words in the poem “The Star Splitter”,
“ If one by one we counted people out
For the least sin,
it wouldn’t take us long
To get so we had no one left to live with.
For to be social is to be forgiving.’ 

“Lord, we try to escape pain, but we can’t. We hope that those who love us will never wound us, but they will. Unfortunately, at some time we will also hurt someone willfully or by mistake. Have your Spirit tend to our wounds and humble our hearts. Move us to forgive our adversaries and ourselves. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”