No. 005: Didn't You Know That I Had to Be in My Father's House?
On temporal sons, eternal brothers, and the end of generational insecurity.
I am chronically insecure. There is no use pretending otherwise.
In Greta Gerwig’s 2017 film Lady Bird, two characters, whom I’ll call L and M (and whose relationship to one another I’ll intentionally leave unspecified lest anyone misinterpret me as remarking on a parallel relationship in my own life) carry a couple lines of discourse that, when I first heard them, gave concrete language to the most defining and persistent insecurity of my life and, if I’m honest, left me physically weeping:
L: I just… I wish that you liked me.
M: Of course I love you.
L: But do you like me?
M: I just want you to be the very best version of yourself that you can be.
L: What if this is the best version?
On the whole, I have a relatively easy time believing that the people in my life love me—that they are committed to me, that they want the best for me, and that they are willing to make sacrifices for me. But do they like me? I’m never so sure.
Perhaps I can imagine that they like an imaginary version of me, composed only of the parts of me that are bright and shiny and dependable and talented and interesting. But it takes little to convince myself that their attitude toward the real me—the one who forgets to text back and lets things fall through the cracks, the one whose jokes fall flat and who has nothing clever to contribute to the conversation, the one who can be a little impulsive, a little vain, a little needy, a little uptight, a little boring, and definitely a little hangry—is primarily one of annoyance or contempt. I easily fall into suspicion that those who have committed to love me actually, also resent me.
My intention here is not to cast blame on any particular experience or institution or person for “making me this way,” and, even if that were the game I were playing, I do not suppose that I would be able specify such a singular cause. Nevertheless, whatever the reason(s)—as at least half a dozen mental health professionals would be able to confirm—different manifestations of this one, distinct insecurity have been the primary root of my several dangerous battles with depression, from my teenage years up until recently.
You would think that by now I would have discovered some convenient three-step process to reground my heart in the gospel when I notice the insecurity creeping in. I know—I would have thought so too. And I hope that perhaps some day I will. But for now, this particular strain of insecurity still haunts me, sometimes so quietly that I notice it not at all, and other times through loud and intimidating snarls.
You might not relate to the insecurity I’ve described above, but I suspect that if you do the hard work of peeling back the layers of whatever coping mechanisms you currently have in place to keep your own heart “safe,” you would find one similar:
Perhaps you have only ever felt genuinely valued for your charisma, or for your productivity, or for your congeniality, or for your attractiveness, or for your intelligence—and you live in fear that your performance will fall apart and your audience will cancel you.
Perhaps you see the world “going to hell in a hand-basket,” and your heart is ridden with anxiety about the powerlessness you feel to help rein it back in.
Perhaps you white-knuckle your way through life, desperately holding onto your public reputation for propriety, good taste, wisdom, helpfulness, or moral uprightness.
Perhaps you believe you will only earn love if you can prove yourself as “special”—but despite years of effort to build a sense of unique identity you have never felt special enough.
Perhaps so painful has been your experience of rejection, neglect, betrayal, or abandonment that no amount of “sworn commitment” from the loved ones who are now in your life sufficiently quells your fear that they won’t leave you in the dust when the going gets rough.
Specific subspecies of insecurity are as myriad and diverse as the human hearts that breed them. Nobody’s insecurity is identical, but we all carry the baggage of insecurity with us into our decisions about how we spend our time and money, how we present ourselves publicly, how we approach our occupations, and, of course, how we both perceive and show up in our relationships with God and other humans.
One night recently, a wave of my insecurity overwhelmed me, and I lay awake in my bed sobbing, lonely and ashamed. I prayed aloud to Christ, but my heart and body still felt restless. I knew that I couldn’t just think myself out of this one; I needed to do something or go somewhere.
The only logistically feasible option for a change of scenery that I could think of in the moment was to wander into the bedroom of my three, sleeping sons—so that is what I did. There in the dark, with the white noise machine whirring, I curled up between my two oldest children, who were breathing slowly and softly, and for a little while longer I lay there, silently weeping and praying.
In that place, the Father met me with compassion and comfort. He renewed the strength of my heart, grounding me in his unflappable affection for, delight in, and celebration of me.
Some who are reading, I suppose, may assume that the logical sequence of these events occurred as follows:
I felt insecure about whether or not I was “liked;” but
Being in the presence of my sons reminded me that they like me; and
Therefore I no longer felt insecure, and I was empowered to praise God for his affection as well.
This is not, however, what happened, and I would submit to you that it is a deeply detrimental habit to approach your children with the expectation that this sort of logic will bear any positive fruit.
Most of us, I’m sure, are by now aware of the existence of generational trauma—the reality that trauma experienced in Generation One often leads to the development of desperate and unhealthy coping mechanisms in Generation One, and those unhealthy coping mechanisms end up traumatizing Generation Two. Unless Generation Two, then, finds healing, then the pattern is likely to repeat down to Generation Three, and so on.
Let’s say that many decades ago your grandfather returned home from war with PTSD, and the only outlet he found to express the depth of his fear, his pain, and his anger was to begin physically and verbally abusing your grandmother and your young father and his siblings. At a young age, then, your scared and lonely father learned to seek the solace of a bottle—and by the time you were born years later he was brain-deep in addiction.
Perhaps you have coped with the chronic neglect that you were shown by your alcoholic father by going all-in to build your life upon a narrative of romance: You were looking for the “rescuer” who would finally give you the affection and commitment that you have always so desperately needed. And perhaps this worked well for you for a little while—until the birth control fails and the man who had once promised to be your everything leaves you in a cloud of dust, and now you’re pregnant and alone.
No, you did not ask for your trauma, and no, it is not your fault; but now you must make a choice—pursue true healing, or numb yourself with coping mechanisms that may very well endanger the relational, emotional, mental, or physical health of your own child. It will not be an easy road, no matter which path you choose, and if you are currently in a similar situation, I will not dishonor the gravity of your pain and fear by supposing that a sentimental little blog post will be just what you need to get your life on track. Real help is available, and I encourage you to seek it. You are worthy of healing.
Many of us have been fortunate enough to grow up in families that were not pierced by generational trauma, and for this we should be ever grateful. However, I would submit to you that even in those families who have not experienced trauma or severe hardship, it is still easy for generational insecurity to take root.
Let’s say, for instance, that you were a pastor’s kid, and your parents’ insecurity about their public reputation for righteousness placed upon your shoulders a burden to behave politely, helpfully, and with great wisdom and maturity at all times. This will likely have created in you an insecurity about whether you are still loved and valued even when you make mistakes or when the sinful tendencies of your heart slip through the cracks in your public performance. The insecurity that defines your life, therefore, will likely be a little different than the one that defined your parents’ lives, but it can nonetheless be just as constricting and isolating.
The tricky and dangerous thing about this, though, is that the coping mechanisms you have developed in response to your own insecurities are likely to produce patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior in your own life that to you—from your posture of self-preservation—will seem perfectly logical and justifiable, but—in reality—may be weighing down upon your own children, breeding new insecurities into them. To be clear, both trauma and insecurity can derive from many sources other than one’s parents, so I am, of course, not arguing that parents are always the primary ones to blame for their children’s insecurities. However, where insecurity does exist in a parent, it is very often the case that said insecurity will trickle down to his or her children.
This can look like harboring resentment and anger towards your four-year-old when you can’t get a “normal” smile from him during your autumnal family photo shoot. It can look like responding in rage over your personal “humiliation” when your kids act out—i.e., like kids—in public. It can look like bringing children into the world for the purposes of perpetuating your personal religious or political convictions (thanks to my friend Emily T. for sharing this beautiful, timely, and poignant post with me). I can think of many more examples, but I suppose I’ve already stepped on enough toes, including my own.
If you had asked me when I was pregnant with our first son, I would not have admitted it or perhaps even acknowledged it internally, but I can recognize now that, if I’m honest, there was a part of me that, at the time, held out hope that welcoming children into my life would do something to heal my insecurity.
Having previously taken coursework in psychology, I was well-versed in the research on attachment theory, and I had already planned out exactly how I was going interact with and talk to my children in order to guarantee for them a secure attachment in my love. I had a public reputation as someone who was mature and gentle and kind and patient and empathetic, and I looked forward with great anticipation to the ways in which these qualities would be magnified through my role as a mother. I looked forward to the ways that my children—the people in closest proximity to me—might be able to affirm and celebrate better than anyone else just how likable I really was.
Before I actually had kids, I think I subconsciously expected that raising children would look something not dissimilar to an episode of Daniel Tiger: As long as I could consistently “shepherd my child’s heart” with a full set of gentle and pithy biblical mantras to ground them in appropriate skills for emotional regulation, then they would look back at me with self-awareness and thanks and enthusiastically reply, “Wow, Mother—you’re right! When I take five deep breaths and use my words to explain what I’m frustrated about, I do feel more equipped to solve my emotional problems!” We would all feel so supported and loved and secure and liked and happy all the time!
Ha…
This turned out, alas, not to be my experience. My sons, seriously, are such good kids—don’t get me wrong—but they are real kids, not PBS cartoon characters, and our home life is chaotic and loud and messy and emotionally dramatic and occasionally contentious. Because it is real.
For a little while, when I was a young mom, this nearly broke me. I desperately wanted to feel affirmed in my competence and character as a mother, and I wanted very badly for my children to like me. Thankfully, I am pretty sure that on the whole they do generally like me. However, as a result of our constant proximity, they also have seen more closely and clearly than anyone else that—actually—I can be quite selfish, quite irritable, quite lazy, quite incompetent, quite frantic, and, yes, frankly, sometimes quite unlikable.
The cognitive dissonance that this reality created in me early on fed vicious cycles of desperation, striving, and shame within my heart. When I would muscle my way through the days with an exhausted and contrived stance of “gentleness and patience,” but my children nevertheless responded not with joyful compliance but instead with continued disobedience, tantrums, and disrespect, I was—to be honest—enraged. I couldn’t hold myself together, and I didn’t know what to do.
I was looking to literal toddlers to fill my deepest emotional need, and—surprise, surprise!—the experiment failed.
This is not the blog post where I teach you how to heal your insecurities. But I will offer the following tip: As long as you are fighting tooth and nail to snuff out the messages that cause your insecurity, you will never find peace. Rather, effective and sustainable healing will be found only when you can believe that even if the thing about yourself that you most fear to be true is in fact true, Christ still loves and delights in you perfectly, and he will supply for your every need. No, our insecurities do not generally reflect the full, accurate, and balanced truth about us or about other people’s opinions of us, but, in reality, they do reflect some truth about what it is for us to be broken, sinful, limited humans living in a fallen world full of other broken, sinful, limited people. Only when we trust that Christ will be with us even in the worst possible scenario will we recognize that Christ is already with us in our real imperfections. Only then will we be able to free ourselves from the whiplash of black-and-white thinking that insecurity produces, and only then can we walk forward in a realistic peace that does not depend on our striving.
Perhaps sometime in the future I’ll return to write more on healing from insecurity, but, again, that is actually not what I am primarily getting at here. My primary admonition here, rather, is one for those of us who are parents—yes, certainly including myself. And that is—
It is your responsibility to heal from your insecurity—not your children’s responsibility to heal it for you.
It takes great courage and humility to recognize and take ownership of your insecurities and to acknowledge the blind spots where they may be weighing upon your children, but, as parents, it is vital that we do so. A child who is forced to bear the burden of his or her parents’ insecurities is no longer a child, but an accessory, a beast of burden, and a slave.
I’d like to explore this point further starting with a consideration a familiar passage, Luke 2:41–52. Read it slowly with me.
Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover. When he was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom. After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.”
“Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know that I had to be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he was saying to them.
Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.
Typically, when I have read through this passage, I have focused on the character in the middle—that cheeky, precocious little Jesus. Sure, it might sound a little crazy for a twelve-year-old to show up alone to the temple just to chat with the elders for a few days, but hey, he’s the Incarnate Word of God—the Second Person of the Eternal Trinity—so sure, why not!
Yes, I believe that all Scripture has Christ as its telos, so I don’t think it’s wrong to prioritize our focus here on whatever it is that young Jesus is doing. But since becoming a parent myself, I now can’t help but notice that the actual majority of this pericope is talking not about Jesus, but about his parents.
One of my sons once briefly became separated from the rest of our family—outside, at night, and in a crowd of thousands of people. We had been attending an event along with a couple other families of our closest friends, and all of our children had been running around on the grass together. We were all keeping an eye on the kids, but in the darkness it was hard to tell who was who and where everyone was going. I remember counting the heads every minute or so, and I will never forget the feeling of indescribable terror that shattered my heart when I realized that one was missing and that he was mine.
Within a couple minutes the adults in our party had spread out across the exit-pathways of the event space, and we had police working with us to find our son. Earlier that evening I had taken a photo of what all my boys were wearing “just in case” one of them got lost and we needed to show the police, but I never would have dreamed that my shaky hands would actually find themselves reaching for the phone to open up the photo, as I cried to the officers, “This is him! This is my son!” I had not a single care about the crowds of people surrounding me, looking on, as I wailed aloud calling his name, shaking and weeping while holding my other two sons as close to my skin as I possibly could.
As it turned out, our son had simply gotten confused for a moment, believing that the whole group was planning to move (which we had been—just not quite yet), and he had wandered a couple dozen yards away, thinking that the rest of us were following him. When he realized that we weren’t with him, he stayed still for a few minutes just in case we were close behind him; but when no one showed up, he walked back to where our group had been—where a couple of the parents were still staking out with the rest of the children—and we were reunited. The whole ordeal was over in only a matter of minutes, but the agony of the experience certainly made it feel like hours. It was quite possibly the most personally terrifying night of my life, and I am still nauseated just thinking about it.
There are very few friends to whom I have told the full details of this story, and—I’m sure you noticed—I didn’t even include them all here. Why? Because not only have I never been more terrified than I was in the course of these moments—I have also never been more ashamed. What sort of mother lets her beloved son go missing in such a setting? Certainly not a good one, and probably not even a mediocre one. Only the worst one. If something sinister had happened to him, I never would have been able to forgive myself.
As I read through Luke’s account of young Jesus’s disappearance, I wonder whether Mary experienced similar emotions. When I have heard this passage preached in the past, pastors often make a point to clarify that in the cultural context of the day, it was normal for big groups to travel together like this, so perhaps for that first day, as they walked toward home, Mary and Joseph really did feel confident and at peace with good reason that Jesus was among the travel party.
But once they recognized that he was missing—and once they started asking around whether anyone had seen him—I imagine that the whispers certainly started circulating, whether directly to Mary or just swirling around in the stiff air, where she could feel the weight of judgment pressing down upon her.
“Mary, are you serious right now? We’ve traveled for a full day, and you don’t know where your child is?”
Irresponsible. Thoughtless. Self-absorbed. Incompetent. I know she felt it.
I will admit that I don’t entirely understand what it means for the person of Jesus, the Incarnate Wisdom of God, to have “grown in wisdom” as a child. When I read of young Jesus, I think I usually just envision him as a stern, grown man in a small body—thoroughly rational and put-together. But I wonder here whether Jesus was actually acting like a true child? I have several memories from childhood of times when I behaved in ways that, at the time, seemed to me perfectly sensible and upright—though looking back as an adult, I can now recognize that to the adults in my life these behaviors likely seemed careless. I wonder whether this was Jesus too—following a whim, the leading of the Spirit, and simply forgetting to consider that he should let his parents know what he was doing? Scripture is clear that Jesus was obedient to his parents as a child, but he was still a child—and sometimes children do things that do not make sense to their parents. As it says right here in the passage, “they did not understand what he was saying to them.”
If I had been in Mary’s shoes, I suspect that when I finally found Jesus, I would have been relieved, yes—but I also probably would have been angry. “Jesus, how dare you do this to me! Don’t you know what people are saying about me now? You have made me look like a fool or worse!”
And yes, Mary is clearly a little frantic in the moment, but the grace of God moves in her, and instead of breaking down in the anger of her own insecurity, she “treasured all these things in her heart.” So—I’m curious—what was it that allowed her to treasure this experience rather than bemoaning its effect on her personal reputation?
“Didn’t you know that I had to be in my Father’s house?”
This is the key. It was the key for Mary then, and I believe that it is the key for us who are parents now as we consider our relationships with our own children.
When we see relational and familial language in the Bible insofar as it is used to describe our relationship with God, I think we have a tendency to understand the metaphor backwards. The church, we suppose, is the “Bride of Christ” because it is “sort of like a real bride.” God is our “Father” because he is “sort of like a real father.”
But no—this is not right. To the contrary: a bride is a bride because she is a type and a shadow of the real Bride of Christ. And a father is a father because he is a type and a shadow of our real heavenly Father.
Of course, the Second Person of the Trinity is the Eternal Son of God. But, as Ephesians 1:4–6 teaches us, God the Father “chose us in [Christ] before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.” And, says the apostle John, “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!” (1 John 3:1). Our identity as children of God is more real and more permanent than our identity as the children of our earthly parents. This is the reality reflected in Jesus’s teaching that, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters … such a person cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26; no, Jesus is of course not instructing us to treat our biological family with malice, but he does make it clear that our sense of identity and belonging should primarily be found within the body of Christ).
If there is any truth that has utterly transformed my approach to parenting, it is this: From a temporal perspective, Frederick, Simon, and Nicholas Smith are my sons, and I am their mother; but from an eternal perspective, they are my brothers, and I am their sister. As their “temporal mother,” I bear significant responsibility to care for their physiological, emotional, relational, and spiritual needs, as well as to discipline and guide them in the instruction of the Lord. However, acknowledging that they are my “eternal brothers” changes a few things:
Most importantly, my spiritual sisterhood to my biological sons means that they do not belong to me, and they were not put on this earth to serve me, to make a name for me, to build my legacy or my reputation, or to meet any of my needs. Rather, they were put on this earth to be loved by God their Father and to worship and enjoy him.
Similarly, just like Mary realizes in the passage above, I can realize that when my children break from the pattern set forward by my expectations, my goals, my priorities, and my convenience, God may actually be using them in part of his grand story—even if at the time I don’t fully understand how the pieces of that story fit together.
Next, it means that I do not view myself as my children’s “coach,” yelling out commands and instructions from the sidelines. Instead I think of myself as the “team captain.” Perhaps I have had more direct communication with the “Coach” and therefore am better equipped to lead my team and bear responsibility for their success, but I am on the field with them, and I need my teammates just as much as they need me. I can call them out when they’re acting like little punks, but so too are they invited to call me out when I don’t come through on my word or when I’m being unnecessarily crabby—and we all are expected to apologize to and forgive one another.
Finally, it humbles me to stay grounded in the recognition that to God I too am like a child. The more time you spend around real children, the more you realize that they are not just precious, innocent, sweet miniature humans. Even when they are trying their hardest, they make a ton of mistakes; they break stuff; they stain stuff; they follow whims without thinking through all the consequences; they have difficulty understanding, processing, articulating, and acting out of their emotions; and they are extremely vulnerable—ultimately incapable of securing for themselves affection, loyalty, or personal righteousness. As an adult, I would like to think that I am perfectly capable of behaving correctly and maintaining an upright character and earning for myself fulfillment for all of my needs. But this is false. I am equally vulnerable and fully dependent on the grace of my Father.
The other night, when I lay in bed with my sons trying to process through my own insecurity, I did not meditate on their affection for me. Rather, I meditated on my solidarity with them. I considered all of the times when they have wanted to share with me a story or a joke or a cool trick that they’ve discovered—but instead of stopping what I’m doing to show them attention and affection, I have been so caught up in my own agenda that I respond with irritation. I considered all of the times I’ve let my frustration show when we’re running behind and it’s taking someone forever to find their shoes, or when someone is having difficulty comprehending a new concept in school.
It breaks my heart to acknowledge that—as much as I have always craved knowledge that those who love me also like me—I know I haven’t always treated my sons as though I like them. (Of course, I do like them—but I know that my actions and attitudes don’t always show it.)
But rather than allowing myself to be crushed with shame on account of this acknowledgment, I choose instead to treasure in my heart the ways in which my own inadequacy towards my children points me to the powerful sufficiency of the love of our mutual Father. From this attitude, I am empowered to step forward with grace for myself, grace for my children, and thanks and praise to God.
He is at work to redeem us all, and I am grateful to be his eternal daughter.
Until next time—
Affectionate thanks,
HLS