If you are a parent, or let’s be real—a person-at-all-in-the-world, you deal with guilt. I am thinking in the context of parenting specifically because it is the realm where I most heavily invest in other humans these days. It is the work I have before me that is the most relational. And it is the work before me that holds the most weight, and consequences.
I was talking to my mom about the kinds of advice you get these days when it comes to relationships in your life. Specifically difficult relationships. Toxic is a word that gets a lot of play, and in the air of self-care that we breathe, there is no room for toxicity. So the advice is protect yourself, shut it out, break it off, do what you need to do to be a healthy you.
I can’t help but think about this as a parent, knowing that in the world I am raising my kids in, the likelihood of them experiencing something I do or have done as toxic is pretty high. I also think about this as a daughter, knowing that my relationship with my own parents has to be prepared to weather storms of brokenness if it hopes to survive. Because we are all so broken.
Gosh, this seems so heavy already. But back to guilt (so much lighter!).
My daughter is analyzing poems in her 8th grade English class. She had to write one of her own, and had to pick a topic that had some “weight” to it. So she picked favoritism. She read me the poem, because she felt good about it and enjoyed the process. And then she said, “This isn’t my experience you know. It’s just something I think is real.” Then she told me how there are of course times when she feels like things are unfair or like another sibling is getting preferential treatment, but deep down she knows she isn’t loved any more or less than the others. I was relieved, of course. But also, guilty.
Favoritism is a real thing; it’s practically biblical. Read about Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers, all the way down to the disciples whose mother asked for them to be given the top seats next to Jesus and you see the Christian story recognizes the toxicity of favoritism. In no way do I want my children to see themselves as either favored or passed over.
But guess what? I think it’s a real possibility they will. And that won’t be my only mistake or failure as a parent. I was listening to a talk about the way American mother’s are obsessed with thinness. “Almond moms” was the way the author described how so many of us talk to our daughters, always trying to suggest ways to be healthier in order to be thin. “Why don’t you just have some almonds instead of those chips?” Too many of the author’s points hit home. What I found most resonant though, was the very real struggle of feeling responsible to train your child in the “best” way, not to be negligent as a parent, but all the while the methods themselves leading to nothing but shame.
These are both areas I am aware of and work on both in my inner life as well as my actions. But I’m here to tell you I have already messed up. And there’s a part of me that knows the hurts I have already caused could very well be used against me someday. And so, I am already preemptively asking for mercy.
In that conversation with my mom, I was searching for what the opposite reaction would be that might be equally dangerous. If cutting off every toxic relationship is the mistake of a secular world without mercy, then perhaps the bland application of “love covers a multitude of sins” without recognizing God’s equal concern with justice is the mistake of many Christians.
Justice is a loaded term, but I think of the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, who proclaimed God’s judgment on his people because of their lack of justice— which included caring for the emotional and physical circumstances of hurting people. Love does not mean we don’t address wrongdoing. It does mean we don’t seek revenge, or retribution. The tools we have today, including therapy and counseling, can be helpful in untangling the confusion of our feelings that can sometimes threaten to strangle us. Addressing our pain and getting help can be included in a “love that covers.”
But there is something else here, too. There is the need for a work that is outside of ourselves. A power that is beyond us. Because when I think about the pains, however small or great that I inflict on my kids, and the inevitable brokenness that fractures our relationships, it can get kind of unbearable. Can you ever read enough books? Get enough counseling? Listen to enough podcasts? It’s a lie to think we could crack the code on getting it right.
Dorothy Day wrote about a day she was feeling so weighed down with the failures of her work, and the sadness of so many broken lives (a regular theme of hers), when suddenly she walked outside and the sky was so blue, and the birds singing, and the trees shining in the evening light, and she was overcome with God’s love.
How is that we can carry on, we think? And then God gives us beauty, and pours out his love into our hearts in some way that is beyond our comprehension or ability to explain it. And we are upheld.
I was reading in Romans, that whole splendid passage in the 8th chapter about the Spirit helping us in our weakness and the creation groaning and the hope that we have that does not depend on us, and I came to the final section where Paul questions what can separate us from the love of Christ.
And I couldn’t help but think of the things that separate us from each other. The hurts and mistakes. The insufferable irritations. And what is the upside-down kingdom way that Jesus offers? The middle way that does not amputate the toxicity, nor overlook without justice? It is the cross. The ultimate form of love, that deals with brokenness and sin in the deepest, most nuanced way. The cross offers both justice and mercy. It deals with and covers over.
I don’t know if my kids will offer me this kind of mercy for the rest of my days. I hope that they do. But I am not dependent on it. I want to keep rehearsing this, to both grow in love that inflicts less pain, but that also suffers it with hope.
Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Nothing. And what will make me separate myself from others? Nothing.
Mistakes will be made. I will need mercy. Thank goodness I already have it.