It Hurts Too Bad to Parent!

It Hurts Too Bad to Parent is what I heard a parent say not too long ago. They were referring to the messed up life that they had had as a child and teen. The parent was trying so hard to not make the same mistakes in their parenting of their teen that they were withdrawing and not doing the hard things that needed to be done for the child. Letting your children have whatever they want, do whatever they want to do, and you being the parent that is a push over is not good for your child.

Listen closely, there was only one perfect couple ever and they rebelled against their father too. Adam and Eve had it going for them and they blew it from perfection to something less than perfect! They started this thing called the fall of man, being marred imperfections of what God had first planned. However, even in this dysfunction, great things have come out of it. You may have come from a dysfunctional family, you did, and you may have a dysfunctional family, you do, but we are not to throw up our hands and quit because of it.

"No matter how healthy or dysfunctional a family is or how lovingly or un-lovingly your parents care for us, hurts happen. All of us have wound from our family!" If you have hurts in your life, and you do because we all do then we have options about them.

1. Try to ignore them and act like they never happened! This is not a healthy environment to be in because it doesn't work. It will come up somewhere else in our lives guaranteed.
2. Call out to Christ and get the help you need. Okay, so you have this persona that you are perfect and you don't want anyone to know you are flawed. (Hey, guess what no one things you are perfect so it's okay to be human.) Only Christ can make the difference in your life that you need to fully heal.

"When I Call On Jesus" is one of my favorite songs and has been for sometime now. You know there is a line in the song that says that mountains are going to fall! What mountain of pain do you have in your life that is keeping you from being whole right now? When you get your healing then you can better parent your teen.

"Look at your life. Where do you hurt? Behind the smile, where do you see bloodstains and tears? Do you realize that Jesus has already come to you and stays with you to bring healing to your hurts? Only Jesus can deliver us through our hurts and tears. He doesn't extract us from them or take us out of them- He leads us through them." You see Jesus has experienced our pain ahead of us. For these sins, your sins, he died. 

Isaiah 53:2-5 
"My servant grew up in the Lord’s presence like a tender green shoot,
like a root in dry ground.
There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance,
nothing to attract us to him.
3 He was despised and rejected—
a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief.
We turned our backs on him and looked the other way.
He was despised, and we did not care.
4 Yet it was our weaknesses he carried;
it was our sorrows  that weighed him down.
And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God,
a punishment for his own sins!
5 But he was pierced for our rebellion,
crushed for our sins.
He was beaten so we could be whole.
He was whipped so we could be healed."

Think about it this way:

• "For those that feel ugly, He had no beauty.
• Feel rejected, He was despised and rejected.
• Have you suffered deep pain; He was a man of sorrow and grief.
• Ever blamed God for your issues; he was considered stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted.
• If you have beaten or abused; He was pierced/wounded for something he didn't do.
• If you suffer from losing a child or other close loved ones to death; He was crushed by death."

I guess what I am trying to say to some parents is that you may have suffered terrible things in your past but do not let your past affect your present and then destroy the future! You see you teens need YOU to be the best YOU, that YOU can be. Only Jesus will make you the best you can be in this thing called parenting.

"Honestly identify your pain, and humbly ask Christ to heal it!" Only when you overcome your pain will you stop making the excuse of It Hurts Too Bad to Parent!

PF48-54