The Help That Hurts

I often look at my adult children as aliens. They are God-fearing, pleasant, respectful, mostly responsible young adults whose existence makes the world a better place. What a departure they are from young adults in the world I had known, one where children were brought down and not brought up. 
Looking upon the grace of God reflected in my adult children, it is with sadness that I look back upon the adolescence and adulthood of my late sister. To say my sister was a troubled young person is akin to saying the Mideast is a troubled region of the world. Troubled doesn’t even begin to describe either scenario. It was no great surprise when my sister dropped out of high school and left home by age 15.
From there the bad choices just escalated: drugs, men, illicit income opportunities. And though my mother’s husband would forbid my mother from helping my sister, my mother would gather up dishes, food, bedding, clothing – whatever she could find – and smuggle the goods to my sister over on the not-so-nice side of town. I sometimes was compelled to ride along.
My sister would come to the door drunk or stoned or less than appropriately dressed or, perhaps, some combination of the three. The bags and boxes always made their way into her apartment, but I knew it wouldn’t be long before my mother would get a call from my sister saying that she still needed the very things my mother had just given her. Young as I was, I could guess what my sister was doing with all the donations. She would find a way to feed her habit above all else.
My mother – guilt-ridden over bad choices she herself had made as a mother – was convinced she was helping my sister. Others, including me, would try to point out to her that she was encouraging my sister to continue in her bad behavior. What motivation did my sister have to repent? My mother’s behavior, I would learn years later, is calling enabling, one of those rare psychobabble terms with genuine merit.
For those who haven’t read my earliest posts, my sister’s self-destructive tendencies ended in her suicide, which was followed six months to the day later by my mother’s suicide. It was failure that killed my sister and guilt that killed my mother. In the end, no one benefitted from my mother’s intervention in my sister’s life.
I am convinced that my mother believed she was doing the loving thing. A mother would never let her child go without. A mother would never turn her back on her child regardless of conduct.
That’s a trap many of us fall into. These days, many of us don’t even allow our children to fail in the first place, but if they do fail, we scramble to make everything right again. The result is that we have an emerging younger generation with little familiarity with the concept of consequences. That’s a concept that even a 5-year-old can understand. I know, because one of my 5-year-old Sunday School students explained it to me.
“If you don’t do what you’re supposed to do, you have consequences. You’ll be punished,” she said, being careful to pronounce every syllable clearly. Raised in a very stable home, she understands that her parents will always be there for her, but they won’t cheer on sin.
Allowing children to suffer consequences is a form of discipline, and discipline is something that God practices with His children. In fact, you had better hope that God disciplines you. “Blessed is the man whom God corrects, so do not despise the discipline of the Almighty,” God’s Word tells us in Job 5:17. The New Testament is equally clear. “The Lord disciplines those He loves, and He punishes everyone He accepts as a son,” Hebrews 12:6 says. 
Discipline reminds us that we are blessed, that we are loved, that we are children of the Most High God. Just maybe, when we fail to administer biblical discipline by allowing our kids to reap what they have sown, we are failing to love as we are loved. Our children must always know we love them unconditionally – so much so that we won’t administer the help that hurts.

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