To The Mothers Who Mourn and Have Made Mistakes...

…but not just those mothers.

(Post Edit: This has by far been my most shared post on social media. That alone is heartbreaking. Thank you for all the messages saying “me too, and I was even worse”…just don’t hashtag “me too” in reference to this post, because that hashtag is a whole other thing. ha. Apparently there is an alarming number of mothers of grown children who are having to walk through very very hard things. Let’s all pray and work towards healing our own hearts and then our relationships. If those relationships cannot be healed - since that is a two way street - then again, as you’ll see in the post ahead, let us run to Jesus. If you are here for the first time, as I hear many of you are being sent here by someone, welcome.)

I am writing to the mothers whose grown children deeply struggle with spiritual, mental, and emotional health issues. I am writing to the mothers whose grown children blame them, to some degree, for their inability to succeed, for their rage, their drug dependence, anxiety, depression, or their serial infidelity.

I am not writing to or about the mothers who were the drug users, alcohol abusers, who had multiple sexual partners with little commitment, or those who severely neglected their children. That is not my wheelhouse - there is help and hope for those moms.

But I am writing to ordinary mothers who made mistakes with their children - even big ones.

I’ll go first:

I am sure I over-spanked. Not always, and not even often. But I did. Never to the point of doing damage - just a few too many licks when I was too angry. Two or three times, I popped someone with my open palm in the back of their head, something between a tap and a slap. I never winded up to deliver the blow, but they weren’t love taps. Given, the resistance I was getting was stinky and blatant, but I should never have done that.

I yelled. A lot. Not every day. When I did yell, it wasn’t all day. But I would break, and when I did, I could go loud and long, sometimes. Our poodle would run and hide.

I employed those weird punishments - the ones like some of us read in the book by Lisa Welchel’s circa 1999-2000 book “Creative Correction”. There are other books I read that I won’t name, but particularly since I home educated, I had a “wealth” of resources placed in front of me, both telling me what “disobedience” looked like, and how I could correct it. A good 50% of it, I now know was crap.

I cared so deeply that my children would be trained well to discern what is good and what is evil.

I am also sure that I cared deeply for my own peace, sanity, and convenience. Those are murky waters.

It gets very difficult to have clarity as a young mother, when you may have your own issues in your family history, going back generations. I started my own family at 20 years old, and made all the hard decisions as to how to raise them…as if I had all the wisdom and resources and support of the women who wrote the books I read. But I didn’t have the wisdom, resources, and support of those women. I made big, hard choices, and went at them with a great deal of courage, but with very little wisdom of my own, almost no resources, almost no support. Some of that is my own fault, some of it just was what it was.

But for Jesus, things would have been tragic.

Have I gone on enough? Are you uncomfortable yet?

I raised children in a sandwich generation, as have so many of you. By “sandwich generation”, I mean the one between the Greatest Generation and what some mistakenly call the “Snowflake Generation”. My parents and grandparents were raised and corrected in ways that outstripped anything I did with my children. Shew. By the current cultural definitions, my parents and grandparents and their parents were “abused”. Yet they never felt unloved or grew up entitled. I raised my children in ways that are quite frowned upon today. Trophies really are given for participation. Spanking is now a huge taboo.

And the way I spanked a few times, that kind of spanking probably should be.

The point is, I have owned all of this with my grown children. I’ve owned it without crossing the line into being weirdly smarmy and without dwelling on it. Two of my adult children have been gracious - the ones who have a vivid, tender relationship with Jesus Christ. One has gone so far as to tell me things were not as bad as even I try to recount it. She feels that I may be trying to own more than I should. She thinks that I am acting as if my putting mud on my own face might be the magic mantra to heal everything. She tells me that putting all the mud I can on my own face won’t be enough - she tells me that this is spiritual and that some spirits have to be cast out into sick and dry places. She tells me that people have to want to be made whole.

I will leave Father Time, and maybe you, dear reader, to decide if she’s wiser than her years.

One thing I know:

My husband and I could have built a career out of owning our mistakes. We could have become therapists (or lay counselors at the very least) and written books full of details of our failures. Many good parents have done just that. I have owned or have read their books. And they actually are now therapists and family counselors. But here is the common thread: nothing they have written or “owned” has made one bit of difference in the life choices of their children. Not even when they owned their mistakes early and often in their children’s lives.

Momma. Guilt and groveling isn’t magic. Grace is. Or, I should say that grace is supernatural. Grace will heal you.

Ordinary, everyday momma of a few adult dysfunctional people (and there are millions of us out there): I can’t talk you out of owning even more than you should because you think that might be what fixes everything for the people you love. Own all you want. There is a measure of healing in it. Ask forgiveness. Always.

But I can’t promise you that your kids won’t tell you that your apology is bullshit. I can’t tell you that after they’ve told you earlier “I forgive you”, that they won’t go right back to recounting your sins and counting them against you. (If there has been any drug abuse, that does things to the ability to form normal social bonds and retain memories connected to those bonds. Know that.)

I can’t promise you that anything you do will be enough. Not much will ever be enough, if your adult children have underlying, unaddressed problems that are actually the result of sustained drug or alcohol abuse in adolescence (the years between 12 and 20, when the frontal lobe is maturing, drugs or alcohol deeply affect the social maturity and memory centers of the brain), combined with many years of going against their own conscience. Those issues, mama, are beyond anything you can help or heal. Never mix those two things up.

You see, there are adults out there who were raised by genuinely abusive, neglectful parents, parents who couldn’t pay attention much less pay for books or college - and those adult children are not….I repeat are not…out scoring pills, driving drunk, making babies irresponsibly, cheating people, or blaming their parents for one…single…thing. They are, in fact, doing well in spite of enormous neglect and abuse.

Under any semblance of normalcy, never confuse or mix your biggest mistakes with your adult child’s moral failures. That’s fake psychology. The link is weak at best, and only works in the most extreme cases - men who do multiple stints of prison time tend to have kids who grow up and also end up in jail. That kind of thing. (Those are the cases that, as I said at the top, are outside my wheelhouse, and not who I am talking to, here.)

I can promise you that if you’ve made big mistakes like me, that Jesus took your shame, and you do not have to let anyone to shame you, not even for your apologized-for-mistakes - much less for your imagined faults and transgressions. Never allow yourself to be railed on or verbally assaulted. No, not even if you yelled at them when they were little. Not even if you over-spanked sometimes, or played classical music a lot, or very occasionally made them write sentences for the strangest of infractions connected to church conduct and/or attendance. Not even if you haven’t babysat your grandchildren regularly or super often. Do I sound autobiographical? No matter. My point is, whether that is you or me we are talking about - there’s no connection between your biggest mistakes and their biggest moral failure! Context, mama. Context. You need someone to help you keep everything in context. I hope your spouse is that person for you, but if not, find someone.

All I can do is try to share with you a measured, considered, reflective, very very honest punch list of my biggest failures in front of many witnesses, for your sake, and let you either judge me or resonate with me. I am purposefully withholding the things I am told I did right. I am not telling you the things I know I did well…even very well. I’m not going to talk about how much I loved my little ones - because my gift is words, and I could persuade you. I only want you to hear what I did wrong.

In that spirit, let me also assure you that you do not have to be anyone’s punching bag, target, spittoon, or toilet, for them to have a clear road to The Master. We Christians get weird beliefs about that. Hey, my friend: God’s got them and He’s got you. If they never run to Him, you need to run to Him for yourself. I say that to you with some urgency. Run to Jesus. You may never get grace from your own children.

I can’t promise you that they will never demand that you to allow them to “be human”, but you will not be allowed to be human. For each time you slip up or are not solicitous enough for them, you’ll be blamed as fresh as if you’d grounded them forever from all their hobbies, spanked them, tied them to a chair, dripped Koolaid on their forehead, and made them listen to classical music at maximum volume for sixteen hours straight yesterday. (Um…for the record….that did not happen. I didn’t do that.)

I’m sorry about that. But you will make it. Run, run to Jesus.

There’s healing, ultimately, in no other Name.

post edit: No names or what anyone else has done specifically over the last decade or so has been shared because I am not out to hurt anyone - I am actually seeking to heal the wound on all sides. That begins with the truth. I am working very hard to only put my own mistakes out there. All day yesterday, I was being told that another perspective is needed. There are two perspectives floating around. Mine, as you’ve read here, and someone else’s. Here is a third perspective.

My History

by Hannah Atchley McConnell:

I was born along with my twin sister in July of 1987 to two young people in love a short 9 months after their marriage (we were honeymoon babies).

A short three years later, with two into-everything twin girls my mother gave birth to a son, in May of 1990... and a mere 3 years after that another son, in March of 1993.

In a short 6 years, these two found themselves with four kids, a ministry (My father was called to pastor the same year Isaac was born) and my father working a job that demanded 60-80+ a week. Normally off only on Sundays because that's the boundary he drew, and that so that he could pastor a beloved, young congregation.

In our young formative years the backdrop was long hours, hard work, one car (which meant my mom could go no where) the only AC in the house, a small AC unit in the window, no TV, tighter than tight finances, no computer, no internet.... until finally email...

My mother despite this decided to do what NO one else was doing at that time... and homeschool her children. Who does that?! Who decides to homeschool four kids with those kinds of resources????

My mother paved the way in the homeschool movement. She forged paths for others... and...
she ran an in home daycare where she watched THREE... hear me.... THREE extra kids to help pay the bills.

Who does that?

Sometimes my mother would become exasperated... sometimes she would yell, sometimes she would spank... I do remember the awkward punishments LOL

But dang if that isn't but a blip on the map of the fact that my childhood memories truly are GOLDEN!

My mother and father provided for us a safe, loving home... The kind of home life and atmosphere that caused nearly all our friends to say many times over, "I wish I had your parents." No exaggeration there. 

My father would go outside and shoot basketball, play football, and spend vast amounts of time with my sister and I, my brothers and all their many friends that were over literally every day because our house was the house everyone desired to be at. This even after long, exhausting hours at a manual labor job.

My parents both sacrificed for us to have the best of what they could offer, and so that we would know what the love of the Father is and what it looks like to live righteously.
This wasn't done perfectly I'm sure- but if perfect is the standard count us all out right now.

When punishment was severest, it was because we mistreated either one another or someone else - and being a bully, or mistreating someone else was NEVER tolerated. 

This meant we sometimes missed out on a party, or basketball, our youth nights with the neighbor friend... why?
Because we can't treat that neighbor friend like crap and then use them as a means to gain and end. My parents were very stern on that front. THANK GOD. 

People are precious to God; so precious He gave His Son's life for them... what would give us the idea that we can use them for our benefit and treat them like crap?

The life lessons they taught were good life lessons. NEVER did the cross any line of abuse. I have many, many, many friends who can testify what it looks like to live under abusive parents and situations. 

They never put us through the heartache of multiple relationships. I had only one father, and one mother and do to this day. I never had to live in a split household nor a volatile one. Real, genuine love was our atmosphere.

When we proved trustworthy they never withheld the benefits of being able to spread our own wings from us.

And our education let us test above all our peers who were even in the public school arena... and led me to get a job that only someone with a degree could have right on the heels of graduating high school. I was the youngest and only non- degree exception they had.
It was what I made of it! What I had was good, I had only to use it to my advantage and I did!

Their example of a loving marriage and their teaching of what made the heart of God happy led me to wait for marriage to have sex... which meant that I don't have multiple fathers to multiple children. I have ONE Godly, good, good, good man who loves me and who loves our son so so so beyond what I deserve.

The foundation my parents laid for me was so good, and so sweet, that living next door to them was a dream come true. You don't see that if there is a background of any kind of abuse or control.

So good that my sister and her husband also followed suit and are now neighbors as well.

I could say so so much more... but suffice it to say... What I had was good. Good and sweet in all of my memories... and so good and sweet in the sight of God.