TALKING TO FAMILY ABOUT FAMILY
Christine Wyrtzen
Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit. Psalm 34:13
How many marriages implode because couples can’t talk honestly about their parents? It’s hard to ‘leave and cleave’. Childhoods are sacred unless there has been unhappiness we’re anxious to leave behind.
There comes a point in every person’s life when God calls us to see the truth about our family. I am to embrace the good, acknowledge the bad, and cling to God for grace as I grieve and make different choices. I am to love God more than my ancestors and love truth more than I love the ‘family way of doing things’. If everybody did this, it would be easier but only a minority face the truth of their families and are willing to live as God’s son or daughter. They risk being the only one in their families who are willing to be sanctified, ‘set apart’, from everyone else.
There is an unwise way to talk to our spouses about their parents. It’s when past hurts affect my tone. Legitimate complaints are disregarded because my words are vicious. Every conversation that exposes ungodliness in family needs a lot of prayer beforehand. You know the truth of the phrase, ‘Blood is thicker than water.’ It’s hard to hear someone else, even a spouse, talk about my parents and siblings and not immediately think, ‘How dare you!’
Few scriptures are more well known that this one. “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” Never is this more true than when I see my family as God sees them. When I embrace the truth of my origins, endless spiritual possibilities open up before me.
How long it took for me to see the faults of the family I love; even longer to see my own faults. Thank you for not giving up and continuing to bring the truth before my eyes. Amen
For more from Christine Wyrtzen and Jaime Wyrtzen Lauze, please visit www.daughtersofpromise.org
Originally published Tuesday, 23 April 2024.
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