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Why
is this the Wrong Question?
How can I get control of my life, my child, this current situation?
by
Darla Isackson
I remember that
awful day with vivid clarity. I had over-scheduled and felt pressured
and harried. As I attempted to clean the house, bake the birthday
cake, and prepare the activities for an older son's birthday party,
my three younger sons seemed to have formed a pact to thwart my
efforts-- David, in particular. Every time someone screamed, David
( five or six years old at the time) was always in the middle of
it. He had messed up a younger brother's Lincoln log cabin, punched
them, or kept them from doing what they wanted to do. David resisted
every chore, made one mess after another, and in general refused
to cooperate with MY urgent priorities! Of course the phone rang
every other minute and regular daily chores had to be attended to.
Then, during the party, as I was cutting the cake, a whiny, selfish
little voice proclaimed loudly, "I want the biggest piece!" Absolutely
appalled that I could be the mother of a child that impolite,
all the frustrations of the day combined in one instant to push
me over the edge I'd been teetering on all day. I took the "biggest
piece" and squashed it into his impudent face! All the children
laughed uproariously at the chocolate mess, but both David and I
were humiliated. Even worse, the moment will never go away--all
of Dave's brothers were there and will never let us forget it!
I can easily
get into guilt about that day--for not being in control of David,
in control of the situation, in control of myself. Because I can
clearly see in retrospect that it was really my own weaknesses that
troubled me to the point of total exasperation, I could go into
"Guilt Trip # 9"--well practiced. In order to be in control of the
situation I should not have left all the party preparation for the
last day, I should have given the children positive attention so
they wouldn't have felt the need to get my attention in negative
ways, I shouldn't have let my feelings escalate without taking time
for scriptures or prayer, I shouldn't have let myself get so frazzled
that I would lose control of myself and act like an idiot. Does
any of this sound familiar? But all those "shoulds" don't do a lot
to help me improve. What if the very paradigm--that the ultimate
goal is for me to "be in control" is an inaccurate paradigm?
Are
We Asking the Wrong Questions?
I have pondered long and hard the control and agency issue
I have written about previously. We are well programmed in this
society to place a high value on "being in control." Self-help literature
drips with suggestions for "taking charge of our own lives," for
"taking charge of the situation," for becoming an increasingly powerful
person." Scary when you think of the similarity of all that to the
anti-Christ Korihor's message: "but every man fared in this life
according to the management of the creature: therefore every man
prospered according to his genius, and that every man conquered
according to his strength." (Alma 30:17)
Instead of
"how can I get control of my life, my child, this current situation?"
what if the correct paradigm is: "How can I experience the mighty
change of heart? How can I turn my children to Christ? How can I
become more sensitive to the Spirit so I can learn the Lord's will
in regard to my children? How can I gain the strength and courage
to yield to the Lord's will and honor his plan of agency? How can
I repent of pride and through the Atonement replace it with charity
for myself and my children?
God
Does Not Give Us Power to Control Our Children, but to Control Ourselves
Previous to the prayer scene I share below, James Jones
had spent several miserable years trying to control his rebellious
drug-addicted son's behavior--and had utterly failed. He said
All pride
was gone; all self-assurance and power were gone. I was broken,
beaten and I could not carry on another step. My son was being destroyed
and it seemed that God would not help! I went back into the bedroom
and knelt down again and began to plead with God for the life of
my son with all the energy of a loving father. I said, "Dear Heavenly
Father, please help me to reach Danny! I must have more power! I
need more power to convince him. Please, give me the power to--"
Then, in
an instant, my mind opened and I understood as I heard the words
clearly spoken in my mind, "No! That is not my way! I will not give
you that power! Danny knows what is right and he will learn by the
things he suffers. No! That is not my way!"
I did not
move. I just stayed kneeling at the bed. The realization hit me
that I had been completely wrong. I could hardly believe it! How
could I have been so stupid? I had actually been praying that God
would give me the power to force my son to do what I thought was
right. I had asked for power to take away my son's right to free
choice. I had been asking for the power to run my son's life--and
God himself wouldn't run Danny's life! I recognized clearly that
force is Satan's method--but it is not God's! Our Creator has given
each person the power to choose for themselves--to choose right
or wrong without coercion or force--and I was trying to change His
plan.
That answer
to prayer was the beginning of my understanding of the principle
that:
•
God--our "Heavenly Father" is the only model we have of a perfect
parent. If we don't get in line with His laws and the way He does
things, we will continue to suffer.
I stood
and paced around the room putting these principles in order in my
mind. I concluded that my Creator was well aware of Danny and what
he was doing with his life, and that Danny was going to learn by
suffering the consequences of his choices. I was very humbled and
knelt down again to express heartfelt gratitude that God had answered
my desperate prayer. I had been clearly shown the best source of
parenting wisdom.
Peace
through a Change of Heart--Not Change of a Child's Behavior
Next I want to share an example of the spiritual power that can
come to a parent (in this case, James Jones) to transcend the behavior
of an errant child as a result of humility and prayer--of reaching
upward for spiritual strength, rather than demanding a change in
the outward situation.
One night
I had my first real experience with unconditional love. Before retiring
I had stood looking out the front room window at the full moon.
I pondered Danny's situation as a bank of storm clouds drifted across
the moon, nearly eclipsing its light; Danny's light was still there,
I thought, behind the clouds of drug use and rebellion. I was bone
weary; this whole experience with Danny seemed like dark clouds
in my life. I walked down the hall deep in thought, and turned and
entered Danny's bedroom through the open door, determined to reason
with him about this drug thing--again! I had spent so many hours
talking to him about it, but I could not give up--surely the next
lecture would get through to him! He immediately began attacking
me verbally when I walked in his bedroom door. He ranted on, his
face growing redder by the minute.
As he raged
at me he reached a point of such intensity that I could feel his
red rage clear across the room, hot against me. I did not respond,
just stood there with thoughts going through my head as he accused
and raged. Surprisingly, I felt calm, and very sad for my son.
As I continued
to look at him, an incredible feeling began to come over me, filling
my whole being with love; I had a keen sense of how greatly I loved
my son. I just stood and enjoyed that wonderful feeling for a minute.
Danny continued
to rage on, but his words did not reach me. Finally, in my heart,
I reached out to my son and silently said, "I love you, Danny. I
love you so much!" Feeling totally calm and peaceful and full of
love, I simply turned around and walked out, knowing there was nothing
more I could do right them.
Previously,
Danny had most often seen my frustration and disappointment with
the way he had chosen to live his life. Danny had not been seeing
or feeling my tremendous love for him--he was feeling my distrust
and my anger at his being so rebellious and hard to manage. My ego
was all mixed in there too. What other people thought of me was
never a big factor. However, what I thought of myself was a huge
factor. It was a deadly blow to my self-confidence and self-esteem
when I could not convince my own son of the danger of drugs. I felt
I was failing as a father when I could not guide Danny to a better
life.
I was finally
learning that good parenting includes knowing when you should do
something and when you cannot. We do not often have the key to "fix"
things for our children, and often cannot do anything but wait and
keep loving them. By his own choice, Danny was in hell and not even
my love could help him out until he wanted to get out. Still I was
determined that he would know that my love was immovable and would
always be there, no matter what.
Application
to Parenting
It is absolutely true that no matter how well we behave, some of
our children may behave very badly, even persecuting us for our
efforts to live righteously. Remember that in spite of Jesus' perfect
example and flawless behavior, some men chose to spit on him, revile
him, mock him. Yet he always gave the perfect response--often silence,
never returning reviling for reviling. In his moments of greatest
pain and humiliation he said, "Father, forgive them, for they know
not what they do." I feel him saying that in regards to me. And
I hear him saying it in regard to my children, showing me how I
should feel towards them. Even the best educated and most experienced
of mortals knows such a tiny pinprick of all that God knows. When
the veil is drawn as our precious children are born, they are faced
with making choices from their first wailing complaint at the discomfort
of being born, with scant knowledge or understanding . "We weren't
born knowing that" is one of my favorite sayings--a buffer when
we find ourselves or our children making mistakes of ignorance.
We simply don't have to buy into anger and misery when our children
are making poor choices. We don't need to be dependent on our children
"acting nice" in order to validate us as "good parents" as Brother
Jones was in the story about David. We can learn to turn upward
and feel the Lord's mercy and love for all of us.
Brother Jones
greatly improved the quality of his life--not by changing his son--but
by changing himself, by developing a new spiritual kind of self-mastery.
As he reached upward to the Lord, he was led to relinquish his former
goal of "control," and he learned to see his son's situation more
as the Savior does and act more as the Savior would.
Learning
from Divine Example
Jesus was not "in control" of those around him or the situations
he found himself in--at least those situations certainly didn't
all "turn out" pleasantly or the way he may have preferred. Those
in his personal sphere of influence did not often follow his perfect
example. Still, by maintaining constant contact with his Father,
he always maintained control of himself--no matter what others chose
to say or do. Jesus our exemplar didn't achieve self-mastery by
white-knuckled effort on his own, however. He often "took himself
apart to pray" to His Father. He spent forty days in the wilderness
fasting and praying in preparation to be a clear conduit of the
Father's will. He achieved self-mastery, then, by prayer, yielding
his will to the Father's, and following the guidance of the Holy
Spirit. We, his imperfect disciples, have a far greater need to
follow that type, that pattern. Is yielding and submitting then
the real goal, the hidden key to self-control? Yielding instead
of seeking control means accepting God's plan as it is, knowing
that we and all our children will make mistakes, affirming our need
for the atonement of Christ. The atonement is all about making up
the difference for our weaknesses and lack of understanding, all
about extracting pure joy from the raw and often coarse material
of mortality.
In
Part Two of this article, we will discuss the implications of these
thought-provoking principles.
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