What has been tried?

I am seriously contemplate cutting my parents off and never seeing them again for the rest of my life, and never allowing my children to see them. This is a radical step. Of course, parts of me are struggling with this: I am often shaken by doubts and confusing thoughts. Also people I am sharing this journey with have expressed concerns with this step: at least, I should communicate my concerns to my parents, and give them a chance to change, or tell them why I am leaving. 

Those are questions I will deal with in a separate post. 

But for the time being, I thought it would be helpful to write down for myself some of the things that I have tried.

It is important to say first of all that I was raised (“groomed”) to be the family therapist. My birth mother confided in me the unhappy state of her marriage, and my birth father shared with all of us children their financial woes before we were six. They leaned on us, and asked us to fix their life. While my brothers shrugged this off, I (as a “codependent” or “people-pleaser” personality) took up this burden. I lived with significant stress and burdens throughout most of my childhood, as I tried to fix my parents’ many problems, including financial problems, church problems, inter-personal problems, problems with their children, problems with their adoptive children, problems with their sex life (I lent my dad, “Every man’s battle” at one point, asking him to read it), problems with their business, problems in their marriage relationship, and problems regulating their own emotions and their physical/emotional health.

I really have tried. In fact, I tried far too hard, in ways which were not healthy or even appropriate. I will not carry shame for these things, because it is not as though I, as a six-year-old, decided that I would do these things. Rather, it was the emotional immaturity of my parents that guided me into these roles. This role of a child caring for their parents is called “emotional incest,” and I have written about it at length on this blog.

With that in mind, here are some of the ways that I have tried to help my parents:

What I have tried

• Planning

I have tried to sit down and strategize about their problems. I poured hours of my young life into stragegies to fix their financial woes, for example. Then, I came to them with my suggestions. They thought I was cute, but did not put my strategies (putting the monthly budget into envelopes) into practice. 

• Austerity

Knowing that finances were an issue, I went without certain things, and never asked for toys at the store. This was only frustrating to myself, as I saw my brothers ask for and get whatever they wanted, if they flattered my mother adequately.

• Prayer

At a certain point as a teen, I became very concerned with my parent’s spiritual life. I am not sure exactly what triggered me. I remember distinctly many times weeping and praying over them, begging God to change their hearts. Isaiah 30:19-21 became a verse that I prayed over them. It seemed to take on a prophetic meaning: that page is still creased in my Bible, and tear-stained from the time that I spent on it. It reads:

19 [v]O people in Zion, inhabitant in Jerusalem, you will weep no longer. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry; when He hears it, He will answer you. 20 Although the Lord has given you bread of privation and water of oppression, He, your Teacher will no longer hide Himself, but your eyes will behold your Teacher. 21 Your ears will hear a word behind you, “[w]This is the way, walk in it,” whenever you turn to the right or to the left. 22 And you will defile your graven images overlaid with silver, and your molten images plated with gold. You will scatter them as an impure thing, and say to [x]them, “Be gone!” …25 On every lofty mountain and on every high hill there will be [ac]streams running with water on the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall. 

What this passage seemed to say was that God’s people (my parents) had lost their way. They had strayed from the good path, and as a result they were receiving only “the bread of privation, and the water of oppression.” God was not with them anymore. God, their teacher, was hiding Himself from them. Yet one day, they would repent. They would turn back. I begged God that they would turn back before death, and He seemed to say that they would, at the end of their lives. They would hear a voice behind them, “This is the way, walk in it.” But only on the very last days: when the towers fall, and everything goes to ruin in their lives.

I wept and wept over this passage. It is hard to convey how much passion I poured into praying for them at this time. I feel that I don’t want to try to convey it: it is very personal.

At a certain point, while my father was making actions which (in my mind) were taking him further and further from the path, such as making enemy after enemy with good people and family, and allowing himself to be fully consumed with rage and hatred and unending bitterness for people (during the court case involving my brother’s divorce), I felt like God told me to stop praying for him. I had, by this point, spent a lot of energy trying to change him (see below). I had prayed with the elders of the church, and many times with my mentors. I would pray often for my parents as I thought of them. For decades after, when I would take communion, I would pray for my own family, for my brothers, and for my parents.

But God showed me the passage in 1 Samuel where the prophet Samuel had appointed king Saul as king. A decent king at first, Saul had gone downhill quickly and was now a tyrant who was abusing the people and a danger to anyone close to him. God told Samuel, “Now the Lord said to Samuel, “How long will you grieve over Saul, since I have rejected him from being king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil and go; I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have selected a king for Myself among his sons.” (1 Sam. 16:1). I felt as though God was giving me permission (commanding me, really) to release my birth father. I could not change him or fix him. And he could not fulfill his role of fathering me. I needed to find other mentor figures. At this time, I had several father figures in my life — one in particular — and saw this as a command to lean on them more specifically.

Appealing to them 

Throughout my childhood, I would chose my moments to talk to my parents very carefully. Between my birth father’s bouts of rage and low points, there was a certain “sweet spot” where he would be reasonable, and good to talk to. My mother also vacillated between distant and self-involved, or busy and hyper-focused on some issue or social-justice cause. Sometimes, the stars aligned and they were both in an approachable mood. When they were, I was ready.

I appealed to them, gently and carefully laying out my case for how they had been doing certain actions, how that was a problem, and how they should change: what benefit they could expect if they did change.

It took a tremendous amount of energy to do this. I appealed to them at least on these occasions:

• Sometime as a child, appealed to my birth mother to put our finances in envelopes, open one per week instead of splurging on payday. She said the only problem was that there was never enough money to go around.
• Around thirteen, I challenged them to tithe. They thought I was cute, and tithed for a time, then concluded that since their life was a ministry, they could just use their finances on themselves.
• Around fourteen, after my grandmother died, I appealed to my mother to perhaps forgive her deceased mother, and find some peace with her memory. She said she didn’t want to talk about it. 
• Tried to talk to them both about my birth mother’s treatment of my adoptive sister. My mother feigned illness and shut down. Later, I appealed to only my father. He saw the issues, but grew silent when it came to trying to resolve them. 
• Tried to talk to my birth father about his treatment of his dauther-in-law. Was not able to speak to my birth father.
• Tried to talk to my birth father about his consuming rage and bitterness towards his daughter in law, while fighting her in court. This was an incredibly difficult conversation, because it meant confronting him while he was in a rage. He did listen, and seemed to reconsider himself for about half a day. Then his rage came back and never left again, that I could see. 
• I continued to interact with him, and wrote him at least one, maybe two passionate e-mails where I told him that I felt like his attitude was positively unchristian, and I worried about his soul/eternal destiny. This e-mail was hard to write, but I meant every word of it. He responded by saying that my e-mail was incredibly hurtful and he couldn’t believe that I would say that. He wrote very harsh things back to me. I responded that I was going to release him, and not try to change him anymore. I told him that perhaps we should both communicate via telephone, as our e-mails were mutually hurtful. I have not tried to appeal to him about his behaviour since this time: we have not communicated substantively via e-mails since this time. 

Asking advice from church 

• I have often asked for advice from my church, and especially from my mentors throughout this time
• I have sought prayer and advice from the elder team, and prayed with the church (in a way which did not divulge personal information)
• I have sought to learn wisdom from the broader church through listening to online sermons, and reading books on family dynamics
• In a way, this blog is also seeking advice from my church community.

Humility: forgiveness, going back to abuser/ absorbing hurt

• I have tried repenting, even when it wasn’t really my fault. When we would have a conflict (because I tried to appeal to them, and my parents were hurt, or when I made a boundary…see below…and they claimed to be hurt, or when they got angry and claimed that it was my fault) then I would try to find even one small thing that I had done less than perfectly in the crisis, so that I could repent of it. They would forgive me and sometimes they would also say something like, “yeah, I suppose I didn’t handle that perfectly either…” but more commonly they would just forgive me and go on like nothing had happened. 
• I sometimes envisioned myself like Jesus on the cross, absorbing their anger, animosity, and evil, and saying, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” 
• However, this strategy only kept the peace by allowing my energy to be drained so that I had less and less for my family. It allowed them to walk over legitimate boundaries set up to protect myself and my family. It deprived them of an opportunity to learn. 
• In 2016, my birth father gave me the silent treatment for five to six months (over my birthday) to punish me for not allowing him to hold my newborn baby. (We were in the middle of a conflict, and he was visibly trembling with rage). I refused to use this tactic on him them. I used crafty language (I forget the words now) that sounded like I was repenting, but I did not state that I regretted my actions, or in any way say that I was at fault. I have not taken the blame in any interactions since this time.

Boundaries 

• We tried very carefully to work on boundaries. Some of the tension points were gifts, length of visits, and phone calls.

Gifts

• We tried to communicate with them about gifts. We did not want to be bombarded with cheap junk for each child, for birthdays, christmas, valentines day, halloween, easter, and every conceivable excuse. With five kids, it was always a struggle to keep the toy-count to a minimum, and we also have ecological concerns about disposable and cheap toys. It also pained us to see so much money spent on toys that were so wasteful. On a selfish note: cheap toys break. Then kids cry. Then dad has to fix them. Toys are hard to fix, and I don’t like my kids crying. They were also consistently unfair in their gift giving: the favourite child would change, but would consistently be the one that had in some way given to them or with whom they had the most memories. They would often send clothes that would not fit. We tried several things, including:
• Very patiently explaining our convictions of minimalism: my birth mother completely misunderstood, somehow believing that we were hoarders. She asked, “But won’t this backfire when you run out of space for all of your stuff?”
• Making a gift registry on Amazon (allowing them to chose anything out of a very large list). Mentioning specific gifts that they would especially like, and making very specific suggestions. 
• They were very consistent in their response:
• 1. When we first made the boundary, they became overly accommodating. As though they were willing to do anything, bend over backwards for our unreasonable demands. Ask ridiculous and overly-eager questions about our “rules” on points that we had never made an issue on, to make us seem unreasonable
• 2. Follow the guidelines once or twice
• 3. Eventually, they would find ways to “sneak” a few gift in that were not on the list
• 4. When we did not say anything… (and who wants to police their parents? Who wants to call them up and say, “I see what you did there! You send a valentines gift with cards and candies. I had said no gifts, but oh yeah…didn’t mention candies. So I guess I’m the unreasonable one here, aren’t I…?”)
• 5. …they would go back to just giving whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted
• …increasingly, they would skip steps 1-4 and just go right to step five. One year, they asked my wife for a list of recommended gifts (we have five kids, and they are all growing quickly. It’s reasonable to ask what each one would be interested in, since they live far). My wife took the time to put a list together, and my birth mother completely ignored it, buying ill-fitting clothes, gifts that completely didn’t match the kids, and with unfairly distributed gifts and a “favoured child” clearly evident. 
• At that point, we gave up on trying to put boundaries on their gift-giving, and just opened them first, hid them from the kids, and gave them gifts that we approved. Sometimes we told them it was from their grandparents but increasingly we told them it was from “santa,” from ourselves, or did not comment on where it came from. The unapproved gifts (and there were many) went into our “regifting” bin.

Phone Calls

• The phone was the most consistent way of keeping in touch
• They would call, and I would usually ignore it, since I would need to prepare myself.
• After missing several calls, and feeling the pressure mount, I would finally respond or I would call them back (I did not want the pressure to get too high, fearing that they could resort to anger)
• I would try to limit the length of the calls to twenty minutes, but found that very difficult
• I would try to limit the subjects of our calls, avoiding personal matters, but found that difficult as well
• I asked them not to call in the evenings, and my birth father especially found ways to remind me of this in most calls: “I’m calling now, at one in the afternoon, because you know, evenings aren’t a good time to call you…” Trying to make it seem like this was an unreasonable boundary, even though I have kids and 7-8 PM are just not a good time to call, with bedtimes and all
• My wife tells me that these phone calls were extremely taxing for myself and for her. She could not stand to hear me talking to them: she is not exactly sure why. I do know that I would spend days at a time rehearsing every detail of the call: what they may say, what I would say in reply. I could not simply “go off the cuff,” or disaster could ensue. I could reveal information that was not to be shared, or I could offend them in some way. After the call, I would decompress and want to talk about it incessantly for days. Then I would have peace for several weeks until they wanted to talk again. My wife tells me that these calls would monopolize my time for a week per call. Since i was in ministry, I had this flexibility: but it simply would not be sustainable in “real life.” We both deeply resented the loss of time to our family and my ministry.
• After his call this past summer, he made it clear that he still felt like it was his prerogative to yell at his adult children to get them in line if he felt that he needed it. He has called numerous times since, but since I am currently “out of line,” I do not see the need to give him an opportunity to call and yell at me on the phone. I have changed my number due to my move, and have not seen the need to give him my new number. His number is still in my contacts: I will not respond to it if he calls me.

Visits

• From the very beginning, our visits have been tense
• At our wedding reception, my mom invited a bunch of her middle-aged friends (that I didn’t even know) to my house-warming party, and told them all to make themselves at home. I confronted her on this, saying this was my home, not hers.
• In the beginning, I would walk on eggshells around them, and tried to teach my wife to do so as well: but eventually, she refused
• I would always be exhausted for days after they left. It was like I was trying to keep up a facade. They would usually cause tension with my wife afterwards.
• After the “blowup” with my brother, the visits were very short
• We would try to keep them to one or two days, but my parents would find ways to add days to them at the last minute
• There was a blowup involving visiting our hometown (where my parents no longer live) without seeing them. We had offered to see them briefly on our way there: however, this was not acceptable. We finally agreed to meet them for one morning while we were in town. The next time that we visited our hometown, we did not even tell them that we were going.
• On their last visit, we told our kids never to go in their camper without us, but they did. We said we would not allow them to be alone and unaccompanied by my parents, but found that “they were too fast” for us, and we couldn’t keep track of my parents. My wife resorted to watching movies with the kids in the house most of the second day of the visit. Despite this, there were several hurtful things said to my children (which I noticed, they likely did not), and at least two moments when I believe that my father touched my daughter inappropriately. 
• When trying to plan a place to meet this past summer, we were at a bit of a loss. We did not want to meet:
• …in our home/space (as there would be no place to get away)
• …in their camper (as they would have the power, and would familiarize our children with being in this space, which we did not want)
• …at a beach, or place with swimsuits (as I did not trust my birth father around my daughter)
• …in nature, at a museum, or nature preserve (as my birth mother claims to have difficulty walking, and with balance)
• …at any place with dark corners or hidden rooms, such as a nature preserve or children’s museum, (as I did not trust my father around my children, especially my daughter)
• …we went back and forth with my parents several times, but eventually realized that there is nowhere on earth that we can meet with them. We just don’t trust them around our kids. At all. Period. We have not consented to a visit with our children since this time.   

WHAT OTHERS HAVE TRIED

I am not the only one who has tried to help my parents. Like some of the more troubled students I have worked with, others have tried to help my parents. Despite their best attempts, my parents have continued to trend downwards. Some of the things which have been tried are:

Mentoring

Some of the people from the first church that they attended as young Christians really took them under their wings and tried to mentor them. I remember my parents speaking very fondly of these friends, and they genuinely seemed to make an impact on them, since my parents really looked to them as role models.

However, they needed to move for work. In the new town, my parents did not find anyone they considered competent to be their mentors. They set themselves up as leaders in their church, and would only ever accept to go to a church that would let them speak and/or be a leader from that point on. 

Their relationships with their previous mentors seemed to drift apart. One time, I remember visiting with one of his mentors (a surgeon). The elderly man’s child and grandchild were also there. My birth father was fixated on the grandchild, being a goof, speaking to the child as a peer (as he often would) and trying to convince the child that he did not like the guitar that he had received as a gift. Rather, he would want some drums. His behaviour was off-putting and bizarre to those in the room.

“Yeah! I want drums! Drums! Drums!!” the young child began enthusiastically shouting.

“Oh Dean! Why don’t you just go!” Said the surgeon’s wife, in exasperation. His relationships with these mentors dwindled over the years, and he never replaced them. 

I don’t think that my brith father sees anyone as a superior, or even a peer to himself. He is on a lonely pinnacle of spiritual maturity, and his only role in the church is teaching, never receiving. 

School Discipline

My parents tried very hard to be missionaries, signing up twice for Bible school specializing in training missionaries. Twice, they were sent home. Their memory of these conversations are very confused, and so I am not entirely sure what was said. However, it does seem like the leadership pointed out things for them to work on: no doubt, humility, a willingness to learn (not just teach), and marriage togetherness. I do not know the precise nature of these conversations.

My parents perceived them only as hurt and rejection, and have been bitter against all missions and missionaries to this day.

Job Discipline 

My birth father had a fiery temper, a superior attitude, and an insubordinate way which caused tension and “sparks” everywhere that he went. At one point, a former employer started a lawsuit against him due to his actions on the job.

Rather than learning from these actions, my birth father quit from nearly every workplace in town. He never saw anything as his fault, but blamed it entirely on his employer. He usually quit without any other prospects on the horizon. Despite being a very competent mechanic, he would have a hard time finding work in my hometown, as he has burned bridges with no less than four employers and there are not many more mechanic shops in town!

Church Discipline

My birth father was involved in and probably the instigator in a messy and painful church split at a local church about twenty years ago. 

The “flash point” of this church split was that the church had tried to hire a pastor. The pastor was unanimously chosen, until someone questioned him about his views on women. He responded with a very conservative/patriarchal view of a woman’s role, and most of the church decided against this pastor. My birth father, however, beloved that it was “God’s will” that this man should be the pastor. He found this the opportune time to write a letter to the entire congregation detailing every problem that he perceived in the church that he had only joined a few short years before. 

Because this is a small town, the local pastors banded together to try to salvage what remained. As far as I understand, they appointed an unbiased leader and tried to get a small committee together to get my birth father and the fragmented church talking together, to resolve their differences. 

My father, however, was completely unwilling to reconcile. He fixated on one individual who had a significant amount of unofficial power in the church, and demanded that this man meet with him alone, in accordance with Matthew 18:15. (“If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother.”) When this man refused, my birth father refused to move forwards with any further attempts at reconciliation. Behind closed doors, my birth father called this man a coward, and the true author of the church split, because he would not meet with him.

At the second church he attended in town, he wrote several letters demanding a role of leadership. After interacting with him, the then lead elder told him that he saw no leadership qualities in him, and did not see him ever leading the church. Rather that taking this as an opportunity to grow, or at least a moment of introspection, my birth father concluded that the church was unworthy of him moved to a third church in town, where they gave him a position of leadership. 

While at this church, one of the pastors from their second church spoke one Sunday and my birth father reportedly stood up in the middle of the service and began trying to shout him down. I do not know what came of that event, but the third church apparently allowed him to continue attending and speaking at their church.

But the leadership at the second church (where I attend) all have a long history with him. Although they do not believe it is their place to speak of him (due to the Bible’s teaching on gossip), they have let me know in their own way that they feel that they have tried, but he was unwilling to listen, and so they have more or less washed their hands of him.

Interpersonal Relationships

I suppose like most people, my parents have had their fare share of people who like them, and who dislike them. People have tried to influence them for the better through recommending books, through tactful conversations about their behaviours, and sometimes through more forceful language. 

Consistently, anyone who has tried to influence them for the better has been ignored, in my observation. Sometimes, they were polite: sometimes silent. But always, when the person left, they sneered and attacked the person’s character.

Apostate Children

My older brother left the faith almost two decades ago now, and my adoptive sister ran away from home not much later. Although I am still in the faith, I have let my parents know in my own way that I do not agree with them on most important issues. Rather than believing that perhaps there was something wrong with them…perhaps something they could change…my birth father called me up from my room, and laid a heavy burden on me. “You need to fix this,” he told me, referring to my brother. Regarding my adoptive sister, he sighed dramatically and said, “Well, I guess she’s decided not to be my daughter anymore.” My mother sees herself as the victim in this, and has tried to elicit sympathy from me for how poorly she was treated by her adoptive daughter. The very one that I had confronted her about abusing.

My younger brother’s wife encouraged him to move far, and we also moved far from them. 

They did not see these decisions as any sort of a wake-up call, or a reason to change their behaviours.

Counselling

My parents tell the story of once, when they were newly married, my mother went for counselling. “The counsellor just cut me up into little pieces, but didn’t sew me back together,” she complained, “and so I never went back.” 

This was used as an explanation for why not only herself, but nobody in the family should ever use counselling: it became one of the unspoken rules of our family.

Legal Actions

At least once, my birth father had a restraining order out against him because of how he was meddling in another man’s marriage. Another time, his first daughter-in-law instituted an unofficial restraining order against him and her birth family.

My parents did not see these moments as times to reflect, but rather became very angry at the person instituting the restraining orders.

Bankruptcy

My parents’ poor life choices continued until my birth father’s lifelong dream of owning his own business came crashing down. The fact that he took two summers off to go off on motorbike adventures…when his business was fixing small engines…certainly contributed to this demise. Also, their inability to budget, or simply to spread out the pay check slightly so as to avoid “splurging” one day of the month, on which I had confronted them (see above) lead to these problems. Rather than learning from the experience of bankruptcy, he blamed the town for not allowing him to fix cars in his garage (he had not looked into zoning before purchasing his house) and became angry at his creditors. At one point, he came out of his office beaming. “I have just talked to another collection agent,” he explained, “and that guy was such a jerk, I don’t even care that I can’t pay it back!” In his mind, one grumpy collection agent somehow made tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid debt all right. He even seemed happy about it right then.

Court-ordered education 

When my parents went through a “consumer proposal,” (basically, went bankrupt), they were mandated to take financial responsibility training. They came home from these meetings scoffing at the requirement to take this training. They stated over and over their only problem was that they did not have enough money: even though coworkers clearly had money for houses, boats, good quality cars, and the like: some of them with more kids than they had, and living in the same town.

CONCLUSION

This post drags on. 

I could go on, but really, what is the point? My point is this: my decision to cut off contact does not come out of the blue. It is not as though I have not tried. Really, I have tried. Is there anybody in my life on whom I have lavished so much attention, time, and energy? I have not given so much time to my own children. I believe that is probably true.

And although it has not all been perfect, I have tried. Now, I am done trying.

Not because I’m in a bad mood and just feel like making an annoying person go away.

Done because…I am done. Really what else is there to try? What else! 

There is nothing else that I or anyone else could try.

They are just done. I am done.

I release them to God.

Let Him sort them out. 

Because I clearly cannot fix them,

And I cannot find a way to live at peace with them.

There is nothing else to try. And so I am just done with them.