THE COST OF STAYING COMFORTABLE

I'm writing for Five Minute Friday and this week's prompt word is COMFORTABLE.  

When I saw this week's prompt word, my thoughts jumped to something that will probably be uncomfortable for some.  

But this needs saying because I've seen too many mums get hurt because their daughters want to stay comfortable. I've been on both sides of this struggle, so I get how it works.  

This week I was chatting with a friend whose adult daughter wants a close relationship with her father - the same father who was unfaithful to her mother and for the most part, absent from her life as she was growing up, by his own choice, while the mother carried the burden of parenting alone.  

This father is now showing up, love-bombing his daughter and telling lies about the mother to gain her trust.  And she's falling for it and questioning her mother's recall and character, the mother who was the present parent through all those years.    

I watched as another friend, several years ago, went through the same thing. It was devastating for her that after years of abuse, having to live on the run with four small children, raise them alone, with no financial or emotional support from the father of those children, to then have the father show up when they were young adults and encourage her children to question her version of events, and her character.  

It feels like a betrayal of trust, an injustice and a huge knock to your confidence. It is all of that and much more.  

I remember doing something similar with my own father. I desperately wanted to believe that he was a good man and that his love for me was genuine. While he loved me to a point, his love was limited by his selfishness and his desperate need to control everyone and everything. One day, he did something very unkind to my mother, in his usual sneaky way, so it wasn't clear what he was up to, and I wanted to side with him. My mother was acting 'crazy' because he was pushing the familiar buttons, and his tactics were working. And the Lord very firmly said to me, 'You will lose your mother over this if you side with him.' He showed me what my father was up to and why.

It was a hard choice to make. It was the beginning of the end of our falsely peaceful relationship. I had to choose and it cost me. I didn't want to accept that this man's intentions were unkind and harmful. I didn't want to accept that he was using me to punish his wife.  I wanted to hang onto a picture of him that honestly wasn’t realistic, but actually quite childish.  The cost of staying comfortable would have been too high.   

No daughter wants to accept that their father is faulty, even if the facts say otherwise. There's a grief and a knowing that comes with that, that you can never unknow. It is not at all comfortable and yet, we need to acknowledge the truth.    

I have seen this play out again, and again. Daughters want their dads to be the original prince charming who loves them and is always good, and they will often ignore the facts to hang onto that childish picture of who he is. Sometimes it's because they don't want to face the deep pain that he has caused them.   Sometimes it’s because their relationship with their mother is strained.   Sometimes it’s because they don’t have a stable man in their lives and they’re grasping for that.  

But our heavenly Father is ready to comfort us as His daughters, if we will accept things as they are, and if we will go first to Him.   I am starting to wonder if we don’t really grow up until we accept who our earthly father is and was - the good and the bad - so we can find our true fulfilment in our heavenly Father.   Our earthly father was only ever meant to point us to Him, not replace Him.    Part of growing up is being realistic about how things really are, and switching our blind loyalty and trust to Him alone. That process isn't comfortable, but perhaps it is actually a necessary step towards true emotional maturity.   Even a daughter with a good dad needs to see him as he is so she can lean wholly on the ultimate Father.   

Accepting the truth about our earthly father is about as comfortable as sitting on these rocks. But like these rocks, the truth is solid, and will hold us steady when reality hits hard.   And like these rocks, our heavenly Father is solid and unchanging, and Someone to really build our lives on. 

 

It is not at all comfortable for a mother to hear from a daughter about the man who abused her that 'he's not really malicious, he didn't mean it, he can't help it, you misunderstood him, you've misjudged him, he said you did XYZ...' when that mother knows what she's lived, and what she sacrificed to protect her children. There's nothing comfortable about any of that, even if the mother isn’t or wasn't herself the perfect parent.    

Nor is it comfortable for the mother to accept that this adult daughter is someone she now needs to be guarded with. It's not comfortable and it's not fair.   

I've felt it this week as a mother, and as a friend.   

Do we want to stay comfortable? Or do we want to grow up and let the Lord comfort us with the grace that meets the truth we must tell ourselves?  

There's grace when facing the truth is painful.   

But we have to start with truth if we want to live in that grace.

And as mothers, we need grace for the daughters who don't get it - to love them carefully while He holds us steady.       

And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. 1 Peter 5:10

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ. Ephesians 4:1

Lead me in Your truth and teach me, for You are the God of my salvation; for You I wait all the day long. Ps 25:5

 

This song speaks well about truth and grace.  

What can cause the broken things to heal?

Only a power that is real

What can cause the prideful heart to kneel?

Only a grace that none can steal

 

For so long I was searching for truth

When all along I was searching for You

Then You opened my eyes

 

You opened my eyes to see You Lord

Oh, I was blind to love before

You opened my heart to know the truth

Now all I see is You, all I need is You