Transform Your Child’s Life
I recently got an email encouraging me to “Transform a child’s life,” It was an invitation from Prison Fellowship to participate with Angel Tree by giving a gift for a child in the name of an incarcerated father to express love for the child from his father.
Every child needs to know his father’s love. Without it, many children spend their whole life trying to fill the “daddy hole” that is left in their soul from not knowing a father’s love. I ache for children who don’t have a father in the home—for whatever reason.
However, when I read the first line of that e-mail I thought of the children who do have a father in the home. Children who have fathers, but they question his love because they experience his anger more than his love.
Those children need a transformed life too. The damage caused by anger remains through adulthood.
Adults who were children of angry fathers (and mothers) told me what it was like to live with an angry father. They said:
• Anger destroyed my respect for him.
• It was bondage.
• It made me lie. I was afraid to tell the truth.
• It created an approach/avoidance relationship. I loved him, but I was afraid to be around him.
• I was broken
• I felt unwanted and unloved.
• I was afraid. Afraid of judgment. Of injustice. Of causing an outburst.
• I felt I could never be good enough.
• I felt rejection.
• It destroyed my motivation.
• When someone disagrees with me, I still get defensive, and tend to get curt and short.
• It made me rebellious.
• It made me angry
• It formed me into a person I didn’t like.
• It taught me not to care about others as much, because then I wouldn’t get hurt.
• I felt worthless, hopeless, and unlovable—I still feel that way sometimes.
• I felt like even God couldn’t love me.
• All the kids in our family struggle with anger as adults, and most of their children do too.
One of the adults took personal responsibility, saying, “I’m aware he didn’t make me these things. It was my reaction to the anger.” There is truth in the statement, and it reflects maturity in the speaker, but it was obvious in the individual’s tone of voice that pain from anger remains many years after the child left home.
The wounds remain unless God brings healing. Even as adults, those children need to be transformed.
Whether you are a mother or a father, if you are angry much of the time, it is hurting your child and the hurt is deep. But you can stop it.
You can transform your child’s life by removing the anger.
Find help. Overcome your anger. Connect with your children and influence them through love, rather than trying to control them through anger.
We can help you find God’s answers to break the bondage of anger. through a Bible study. One inmate wrote to say that he’d changed enough that instead of fighting with his wife every time he talked with her on the phone, that he was helping her deal with her anger. He was also counseling her on how to connect with their rebellious teenage son.
You can get help for anger too. God can transform you if you follow His Word and apply it to you life. Uprooting Anger: Destroying the Monster Within has answers to help you walk in freedom in Christ.
Don’t wait. Don’t hurt those you love. Transform their lives.
If you had an angry parent, how did it affect you? Have you received healing for the damage it caused? Did you learn to use anger as a way to deal with life?
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