Chapter 4 - Skill1: A Beloved Child (The Wholehearted Journey)
Nov 01, 2021
Joel
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How much control do our maternal relationships have over our emotional growth and our ability to trust? Do you ever feel like there's an unspoken chasm between you and your mother? The invisible thread of maternal influence can have far-reaching effects on our mental and emotional wellbeing. This episode is a deep-seated exploration of how the lack of motherly affection or presence can stunt our emotional development and mar our capacity for trust. We shine a light on the importance of acknowledging our mothers' imperfections and letting go of the idealized versions we've built up in our minds. As we traverse this journey of understanding and forgiveness, we pave the way for setting healthier boundaries and nurturing a mature love.
Stepping into the sacred realm of divine love, we draw from the deepest well of comfort and assurance - God's unfathomable love for His children. We anchor our discussions in the heartening prayers of Jesus, showing us the path to true confidence and courage. Embracing the identity of being a beloved child of God instills boldness within us, and we are invited to hold our heads a little higher. The episode unravels the transformative power of recognising God as our ultimate parent, who can fill the voids left by our earthly parents and provide us with the love and security we yearn for. Tune in to embark on this healing journey towards a deeper understanding of divine love.
START READING/LISTENING TO THE BOOK NOW FREE... @ joeljohnson.org
How much control do our maternal relationships have over our emotional growth and our ability to trust? Do you ever feel like there's an unspoken chasm between you and your mother? The invisible thread of maternal influence can have far-reaching effects on our mental and emotional wellbeing. This episode is a deep-seated exploration of how the lack of motherly affection or presence can stunt our emotional development and mar our capacity for trust. We shine a light on the importance of acknowledging our mothers' imperfections and letting go of the idealized versions we've built up in our minds. As we traverse this journey of understanding and forgiveness, we pave the way for setting healthier boundaries and nurturing a mature love.
Stepping into the sacred realm of divine love, we draw from the deepest well of comfort and assurance - God's unfathomable love for His children. We anchor our discussions in the heartening prayers of Jesus, showing us the path to true confidence and courage. Embracing the identity of being a beloved child of God instills boldness within us, and we are invited to hold our heads a little higher. The episode unravels the transformative power of recognising God as our ultimate parent, who can fill the voids left by our earthly parents and provide us with the love and security we yearn for. Tune in to embark on this healing journey towards a deeper understanding of divine love.
Speaker 1:
Chapter 4. Skill 1. A Beloved Child. Not long after my mom and rod married my older brother, stepbrothers and I started stealing incessantly. During this season, we swiped toys, comic books, candy, and occasionally even stole cash from my mother's purse. There was no logical reasoning for why we did so. Our family enjoyed two incomes. We boys were in a much more financially prosperous situation than any of us had ever experienced prior. We didn't need to steal, but the strange gratification we experienced after each successful job was addicting. We couldn't stop.
Speaker 1:
Until recently, I had always believed my season of shoplifting to be an erratic adolescent phase. That was until I came across this excerpt from a book called Becoming, attached by Dr Robert Karen. Although all the children stole repeatedly and compulsively, the thefts were often pointless. None of them seemed to have any sense of the meaning of what they had done, they could not say why they stole and they seemed impervious to the wrong done to others. A child who's been separated from his mother not only craves her love, but also the symbols of her love, and so typically the young thieves stole milk, food or money to buy food. These are the things they naturally associate with gratification. Often they stole from their mothers A tragically perfect symbolic act. Well, that definitely got my attention. The similarities with my own history were undeniable, and what I've discovered since is that adolescent stealing is one of the tell-tale signs of mother deprivation. Though I never experienced long durations physically separated from my mom as I had with my biological dad, mother deprivation can occur in plenty of ways, much less detectable than total desertion, yet it can be just as devastating. Another excerpt of Dr Karen's book says this. Emotionally healthy people who were both self-reliant and able to rely on others had had home lives in which both parents were loving and emotionally generous and the mother had given them a feeling of complete security. Living with rod was anything but secure. At age 11, my mother's decision to place me in this abusive environment broke trust in my child's heart and, in the wake of it, I pulled away internally and detached from her Child.
Speaker 1:
Detachment has devastating consequences. It profoundly shapes an individual's core convictions concerning our world, whether we perceive it as a place of abundance or scarcity. Children reared by mothers who are affectionate, attentive and warmly meet their needs tend to possess an inward assurance of abundance, just like their mother's abundant love. So they believe this world to be. Unfortunately, children who are raised by less hospitable mothers rarely share the same core convictions like their mothers less than abundant love, so they also believe this world to be. It shapes what they believe about life. Love is scarce. Sees all the affection you can while remaining relationally detached, so if they leave, you can shelter yourself from the emotional fallout.
Speaker 1:
Making this connection was incredibly helpful in freeing me from all the shame I was experiencing as an adult. I felt ashamed for not experiencing what I perceived a good adult child should feel toward their sacrificial single mom. Though at the time I sincerely tried to muster more affection for her, I could not. Attempting to do so felt forced, contrived and always left me emotionally exhausted. Freedom from this shame came when I discovered that millions of others felt, as I did, emotionally distant from their mom. Feeling when and why I emotionally detached from my mom helped me to stop feeling so ashamed, believing that something was irreversibly wrong with me, that I was ungrateful, uncaring or cold hearted. Learning that most of the people who felt like me had experienced mother wounds or mother deprivation that they, at some time in their childhood, felt as I did ignored, unloved, unwanted and unvalued by their mother, knowing this helped me to recognize that my mother's actions or lack thereof, especially during the time we lived with Rod, were wrong and wounding. Discovering this ultimately allowed me to forgive her, something one cannot do until they acknowledge that another's actions were in fact hurtful and wrong. It helped me set healthy relational boundaries with her and learned how to maturely love my mom. We will discuss how to do this in greater detail during Skill 4, a Mature Love.
Speaker 1:
No mom is perfect. Every human has deficiencies, weaknesses and blind spots and as adults it's appropriate to honorably take your mom and dad off the pedestals we often place them on during childhood. Seeing her for who she is, beyond her role as mother, may even free her to feel more comfortable, revealing to you the imperfect human she's always been. It will also release you to more appropriately evaluate any unaddressed wounds you may have received while being raised by that imperfect person you call mom. This is some pretty tender territory. I mean moms are sacred. I mean we don't let anyone talk bad about our mama, right? We don't allow people to even go there and so often, even when it's healthy, appropriate and necessary for our hearts' healing, we don't allow ourselves to go there either. So many of us unknowingly limp through life never addressing these unacknowledged wounds because it so often feels unnatural, unkind, kind of just wrong, right. Well, it's never appropriate to blame all of our problems that we experience in life on your mother or father. It is appropriate to kindly go there and investigate it some. I know this is sacred ground, tender territory, so you'll want to be kind to yourself as we go through this portion. We don't start in this chapter this very first skill, this beloved child identity, talking about moms, but throughout all of our small groups and all of our classes, this has been the section of this first skill that has opened the eyes to so many and where countless people have expressed such life change. So I felt I'd be a little remiss if I didn't at least give you an excerpt.
Speaker 1:
Here we deal with the father wound and we deal with the mother wound, and part of the reason it is so important is this concept of letting go of our earthly father and our earthly mothers, seeing them as the imperfect people that they are. And I like how John Elgerd says it. He says as God created fatherhood, fathering, father love and the father need in our soul, so he created motherhood, mothering, mother love and the mother need in each of us. You know. God is the inventor of motherhood and loves us more tenderly and affectionately than any earthly mother or father could. Listen to this verse in Isaiah 49, verse 15. It says can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has born? Though she may forget, I will not forget you. That's God's words. God invented father love and he invented mother love. I would say.
Speaker 1:
Over the last 25 years ago we have talked about father wounds pretty openly in the church, but we haven't really addressed mother wounds In the real. It's just that moms are so sacred, right Like nobody messes with mama, you know, and so we don't allow ourselves to go there. But we can't ever fully move on and transcend until we at least open the hood, look around, see how the engine's doing, take a few readings and to release our moms as well as our fathers and to just see them as the imperfect humans that they are. God, your true father and true mother, your heavenly parent, loves you how much? We find the answer in a prayer. Jesus prayed hours before he was crucified.
Speaker 1:
St John, chapter 17, verse 20 through 23, was specifically for you and for me. Listen to his prayer. I'm praying not only for my present disciples, but also for those who will believe in me because of their witness about me, that they would know that you, god, love them as much as you love me. The answer to how much does God, your heavenly parent, love you, it's this God loves you as much as Jesus. Jesus' dying prayer was that you would know that your Creator loves you as much as he loves him. Now take a deep breath. Let that sink in for a moment. God loves you as much as he loves Jesus. Would you just say it in your mind right now God loves me as much as Jesus, until that feels as natural as that deep breath you just took a moment ago. And this is the ultimate thing that helps us to transcend. God loves you as much as he loves Jesus. There is nothing separating you and there is nothing that is distancing you from your heavenly parent.
Speaker 1:
If you didn't receive love from a father like me, you had an absent biological dad. You can receive love from God, he told Moses. He said I am, that's my name, I am that I am. And if you need a father, god, the inventor of fatherhood, says I am. And if you need a mother, god, the inventor of motherhood, says I am. This is our identity to be the much-loved son of a heavenly parent. As you can imagine, jesus identified as a much-beloved child of God and not shaped his character. It made him bold, confident and courageous. When your father is the creator of the universe, you hold your head a little higher, you stand a little taller and, as you'll see in the next chapter, jesus is inviting you to do the same.