Here Be Dragonsಮಾದರಿ

MEAN GIRLS

I’d prayed from the earliest days of being Caroline’s mom that God would use the unique qualities He’d given her to make her a leader who would point the people around her to Him. But I was too naïve to realize that wouldn’t happen without her character being built through circumstances that have often been difficult.

Watching our daughters struggle with mean girls, loneliness, and depression or anxiety is brutal, partly because doing so reopens our own old wounds. The reality is that for some of us, parenting a teenage daughter is the catalyst that causes us to realize that the first mean girl we faced in life was our mother.

My mom and I spent my high school years locked in a te­dious, exhausting dance of competition, envy, love, anger, laugh­ter, and tears. Neither of us knew how to be what the other needed. I worked hard to keep her volatile mood swings at bay and then resented her for it. I wanted her to be proud of me or maybe just see me, but it seemed like she was always too wrapped up in her own search for signifi­cance to pay much attention to mine. The fact that many of her accusations toward me were couched in religious guilt convinced me that God viewed me as one of His great disappointments.

Over the years, I prayed that God would give me discernment about re­pairing my relationship with her. I would occasionally do an emotional inventory to see if I had any lingering bit­terness or resentment toward her. I knew more and more that the answer was no. I was no longer holding her prisoner for the things she couldn’t be. Sometimes all you can do is come to terms with the truth of who people are, accept that you can’t change them, and then move on.

As we navigate our own wounds and fears, we rely again and again on God to show us how to parent in healthy ways, in ways that we did not experience ourselves. Our trust in God, not pat answers or clever parenting techniques or even our own understanding (see Proverbs 3:5-6), will make the biggest difference in our lives and in the lives of our children.

How has parenting brought back feelings or memories from your childhood? What are specific generational bonds or bad relational habits that you want to break?