Posted on 06/18/2017 5:37:16 PM PDT by Arthur McGowan
Question: “My wonderful wife is pregnant with our second child and I’m very excited to have another kid. As I ponder fatherhood, I get so scared that my kids might feel the same darkness and loneliness I felt when I grew up. I’m afraid that because I haven't really addressed the pain of my childhood, that history will repeat itself and I’ll be like my father and my kids will cry as I did. What can I do, to make sure that if my kids feel pain, it’s not because their father? How do I break the chains of bitterness so that it doesn't affect my children? How can I keep my emotional baggage from affecting my children's development?”
Just remember it is not about you.
This is about the easiest one to answer.
One simply turns himself over to the only person who can forgive us our sins, and who actually died for us.
Anything else will fail in the end.
Child-led works well: ‘What does this child need?” It keeps you focused on them. You are aware of how you will NOT do it; that’s key. You’ll do fine.
Two sons were raised by a very angry and abusive father.
One son followed in the father’s tracks and was very nasty and abusive to his children.
The other son became a kind and loving father to his children.
When asked why they turned out as they did, they both said the same thing, which was, “With a father like mine, how could I possibly have become anything different?”
My brother told me that story. Our father was a very mean, abusive alcoholic. My brother had a choice and he chose to become the opposite. With God’s help, ALL things are possible.
That’s easy too. Children need the Lord.
Everything else is second to that.
If somebody treated you in such a way that it caused that fear in you, find a place where you can be alone and name that person out loud and forgive him or her.
If the thought of that person keeps returning, keep forgiving him or her. Out loud. Not yelling or anything, but in an audible voice. Your "inside voice" as it were.
You are not the words spoken over you. Now you have a choice. You can forgive, even if your father is no longer alive.
But you can’t forgive until you have asked for forgiveness from the only one who can grant Eternal forgiveness.
That is where it starts. Generational curses can be broken. It is to your credit that you recognize the cycle has to be broken.
Might be nice if you mentioned the name of that person—Christ.
I figured it was pretty obvious. Yes Jesus Christ himself, the savior of all mankind.
Found out later in life my father was a serial philanderer. Me and all my siblings (3) have major issues. Alcoholism, wasted careers, poor choices, etc. The sins of the father ring quite a bell for me. Please pray for that curse to be removed. Anyone.
He addressed his own issue.
He needs to addess the pain of his own childhood and make the conscious choice to not repeat the mistakes that were made by his father.
He will make plenty of his own anyway.
He needs to find a godly man who is also a father and has successfully dealt with his issues.
Yep!!!!
I have an excellent little book on forgivenss and I cannot remember who the author is.
When I get home I will look it up.
Blaming your parents for your problems is a waste of life. You simply do what you know to be right by holding on to your Christian faith and being thankful for the parents you had; none are perfect. My parents are gone now and all I ever dwell on are the good times we had, and there were many. I simply do not think about the bad times since they did the best they could with no instruction manual. Count your blessings, not your troubles.
Doing it right now.
I will pray.
There’s a man named Jimmy Evans who deals a lot with emotional healing.
If you do a google search on him you will find a lot of his stuff on you tube and online.
I listened to one of his series and it helped me tremendously.
Essentially, we cannot control what happens or happened to us, but we can control our reactions to those events.
In the vast majority of those cases, forgiveness is the only and best option.
I agree that verbally saying out loud that you choose to forgive someone, even if the emotions are not on board yet, is very freeing.
Also, staying in Scripture and reading it daily makes a huge difference. It might not seem to be helping at first, but it will do its work in you and you will notice it sooner or later, just like anything we do for healing. It takes time.
Imitate those traits of your parents which were good, just, and loving in your childhood
Avoid those which were bad
My own father was abandoned by his drunk father when he was very young - and was raised by a strong, responsible mother and grandmother. He vowed at an early age never to be that man, and to give his own children the kind of father he didn’t have
My dad is a real man. Love you, dad
My parents were awful. I had to think about everything before I acted when parenting. I had no good example. Probably I was too lenient, but I will say this: I have no drug addicts, no alcoholics, my kids like to see me and they know I love them. I, on the other hand, don’t care about my parents who have been pathetic as grandparents.
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