Has sighing become a common experience for you? It has for me. The news tells us of natural disasters robbing people of their homes and livelihoods, the awful things that human beings do to hurt one another, social and political unrest, the many things that can malfunction in our bodies . . . sigh, sigh, sigh.
I comfort myself by taking a quick mental inventory of all that can go wrong, acknowledging that I have not been affected by them recently and stopping to thank God for the undeserved blessings of freedom from those kinds of pain. My sighs are relieved and I move on.
But then it hits me.
There is one sigh-producing experience I can’t escape that seems to leave me feeling especially sad. My mother’s heart borders on feeling slightly fractured at times and completely broken at others. What leaves me feeling this way? It’s walking through life with my adult children and grandchildren as they navigate so many painful situations, mostly due to things that are completely out of their control.
From talking with so many women, I know that my perspective is not unique. Our kids and grandkids are being bombarded by stressors unlike those experienced by previous generations. As Christians, we also know that there is an enemy at work, relentlessly stirring up confusion and delighting in being a master of deception.
I could allow this reality to discourage me but thankfully, another thought silences my concerns.
“Be still, and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10 ESV)
Those eight words have brought me to my knees on many occasions. I often say them eight times, emphasizing a different word each time. They are packed with wisdom and evoke a peace in me that surpasses understanding. We have a God who sees and cares about the pain going on in our younger family members’ lives. He will use that pain in one of three ways: to show His divine power of healing, to build endurance and perseverance, or to build hope in an afterlife with no pain.
Recently, I felt honored to have the opportunity to be a part of the online event When You Love a Prodigal, which generated a number of questions about the issues that make us hurt for our children, grandchildren, and other loved ones. Here, I will address several questions that represent some of the many that were asked, but first, I’d like to start with some truths from God’s Word.
Lead with Love
We learn from Scripture that God is love (1 John 4:7–8) and that we are expected to respond to each other with love. God’s Word is clear on this:
Therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and dearly loved, put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience,bearing with one another and forgiving one another if anyone has a grievance against another. Just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you are also to forgive.Above all, put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. (Colossians 3:12–14, emphasis mine)
Choose Grace & Truth over Control
Jesus’ relationships with His family members were not all good all the time. Some did not believe in His convictions. He didn’t try to control them or allow them to control Him. Instead, He approached them with grace and followed with truth, delivered directly and concisely. Think of the story of the woman caught in adultery. After demonstrating compassion and empathy for the woman by showing that none of the men who were ready to stone her were free from sin, He refused to ridicule her. Instead, He made two statements, one of grace and one of truth, simply, clearly, and concisely.
“Neither do I condemn you,” said Jesus. “Go, and from now on do not sin anymore.” (John 8:11)
Oh, how I wish that I could be so clear sometimes! What about you?
Beware the Plank
Also in Scripture we learn that we are better at judging others than recognizing sin in our own lives. Often our conflicts with others may have more to do with ways we have hurt them and their responses to that hurt than with sin in their lives. We are given a noticeably clear and humbling instruction about this when we are told to take the wood plank out of our own eye before we worry about the speck in our brother’s (Matt. 7:3–5). That verse comes to my mind occasionally when I am about to make an unfair judgment about someone else because most times, I am guilty of the same offense.
Keeping these truths in mind, let’s talk about how to respond to a prodigal in your life.
Q: What if my child has requested “no contact”?
Some of you asked how to cope with one who does not want to have a relationship with you or has specifically requested no contact. Should you continue to pursue anyway or respect the prodigal’s wishes? Actually, I suggest that you do both.
Since we can’t control the thoughts, feelings, behaviors or beliefs of others, we need to accept and respect their wishes while also thinking about how Jesus responded to people. With a foundation of love, Jesus actively pursued people, regardless of their earthly circumstances. But let’s remember that He did that by building relationships with them via extending grace and understanding, not by exerting pressure on them to accept His truth.
With Jesus having served them, loved them, and shown an interest in them, it was a natural response for many to want to follow Him. When they listened to Him, watched Him, and interacted with Him, the truth became clear to them. If people rejected Him, He didn’t try to force contact. Instead, He pursued them through prayer, in appeal to the Father.
The most dramatic example of this is found when Jesus was dying on the cross, despised and rejected by those who had captured Him. Humanly speaking, we would expect someone in His position to be full of anger, hostility, and self-pity. Instead, He makes this request of God, the Father, for His captors:
“Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34)
Q: What if my prodigal has a mental health issue?
What if there is something, perhaps a mental health issue, interfering with a prodigal’s ability to accept grace, connect, or understand? What if an addiction has pulled him away from you and keeps him from being able to focus, concentrate, and process information? How can you help when your daughter’s anxiety is so high that she is afraid to talk to you or leave her apartment? Where do you turn when your son’s depression is so severe that he can’t get out of bed and won’t let you be near him?
In cases like these, support, treatment, and safety from harm that could come from the effects of the mental health issue is really important for your prodigal. That help may come from trusted friends, family members, mentors, and others who have had a positive influence on you and your loved one, along with a trained and licensed mental health professional. There are many good treatments for people struggling with mental health issues and their family members, and early intervention is key. Support from you needs to focus on addressing safety and recovery first and then healing your relationship.
Q: What if my prodigal has rejected biblical sexuality?
We can’t escape the fact that our children and grandchildren have been bombarded by messages that have encouraged them to pursue sexual expression, behaviors, and ideologies that were not originally intended by our Maker. The pressure is overwhelming and relentless. Factual information such as the science of male and female DNA has been set aside as “one biased perspective,” while opinions have been presented as fact. This has resulted in widespread confusion and deception.
Many of you are struggling with family members who are not in relationship with you because they have embraced an LGBT+ lifestyle or ideology. Discipleship is the same with these individuals as it is with anyone struggling with any other sin. It must start with love and building a trusting relationship. Be open to learning about their lives and understanding how they came to their decisions in order to know how to disciple them lovingly and gently.
You also need to be willing to hear if you have done something to hurt your prodigal that influenced their decisions. If so, confess that sin to God, and ask Him and your loved one for forgiveness. Now let me be clear: there is a current trend among (mostly) young people to confront their parents about all of their parental “sins” and ways their parents have wronged them. Often such claims are, honestly, ridiculous.
We all make mistakes as parents. We should humble ourselves and take responsibility for patterns of physical, emotional, verbal, or sexual abuse; neglect; addictions and their effects on our families; extreme legalism; or other problems that interfered with our ability to nurture, disciple, and care for our children well. With successful reconciliation of intended or unintended hurts, we can love and accept our children or grandchildren without accepting their choices, just like we do not accept other choices our children and grandchildren make that are contrary to Scripture.
Our role is to love, guide, and encourage our loved ones toward God’s will. We are most likely to do that by modeling Christlike behavior, extending grace, and spending more time listening to them than talking at them. We do need to present our beliefs, grounded in Scripture, along with truths that dispute the lies our loved ones have been told, but we can’t expect our prodigals to listen until we have built a relationship on love rather than on a desire to control them.
Q: What if my prodigal isn’t my child?
For some of you, the prodigal in your life is a spouse, a sibling or a friend. If that’s you, everything I have written applies with one new thing to keep in mind. You may need to take a secondary role to someone else if you are not in contact with the prodigal for now. In other words, you may need to step aside while a sibling of your spouse, the spouse of your sibling, or the parents of a friend take a primary role in engaging with the prodigal. But you can continue to reach out, pray for the prodigal, and seek a healing relationship. Just be sure to be sensitive to the fact that someone else might be in a better position to support, love and encourage the prodigal.
Only God can change hearts. He knows our children and grandchildren better than we do, and loves them more than we ever could. He is also a fair and just God. Therefore, we can serve Him and our loved ones best by praying for wisdom and guidance for us to know how to interact with our prodigal family members in accordance with His will.
We all need to be careful to stay focused on the truth and not allow ourselves to be distracted by the current issues and events that our prodigals are facing. If we believe their problems are all about sex, drugs, or any other social or political trends, we start to pay attention to the wrong things and look to the wrong places for relief and answers. What we are dealing with is sin and God is our refuge and strength. Let Scripture and the Holy Spirit be our guides and Jesus’s ministry of love, grace, and truth be our example.
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