Ever since my wife's parents have divorced, we've had to put new rules in place to protect my wife and the kids from as much of the fall out as possible. We now do not allow either of them to stay at our house overnight due to the stresses it creates. While that particular stress is now avoided, there are still plenty of others to go around.
Without going into too much detail, our family has suffered this weekend from the affects of a visit from one of my wife's parents. It has been an emotional and physical strain that makes us wonder how to balance our needs to protect ourselves with the commandment to honor father and mother, who sometimes are not deserving of honor in my opinion. If we continue to have this kind of fall out (EVERY member of the family has been negatively affected), how can that be good for our family, immediate and extended?
4 comments:
Sorry you hear you had a rough weekend. Hope things get better soon. It is a hard situation to be in.
having divorced parents is hard. my mom is on her third husband so I definitely know :) the best thing is being honest and being true to yourselves and to God. I know Heavenly Father would not want you to be miserable many hugs for you and your family
Wow Joe, that's hard. It seems to me that you both are handling it well by setting up rules to protect yourselves and your children.
As far as the question of how to balance protection with the commandment to honor father and mother, it might be helpful to look at it like a hierarchy of stewardships. Adults have the ability and resources to turn to many different people in order to get their emotional and physical needs met...children don't have that ability and those resources. Children are completely dependent on their parents for emotional and physical protection. As a result, your first stewardship has to be the protection of your children. Honoring your parents is still a commandment and is important, but it cannot be allowed to interfere with the higher priority stewardship of protecting your children. So, if you can find ways to honor your parents that don't harm your children, then by all means do those. But if your parents ask for support that would require the harming of your children, you can kindly suggest they meet their needs elsewhere and can feel okay about it, because saying "no" to your parents allows you to say "yes" to your higher stewardship.
The book "How to Hug a Porcupine" talks about stuff like this, and might be helpful.
Sure love ya.
Thanks for your support everyone. Cindy, I appreciate the point of view of needing to make sure the kids are taken care of first. It's always helpful to have a priority of things to follow.
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