(This blog continues our summer series over the ten commandments.)
Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.
Exodus 20:12, NLT
Choosing to write about the 5th of the 10 Commandments was no light decision for me. However, it has been my experience that doing hard things within a safe space can only help me to grow in Jesus. To heal, and thus, to change.
Obedience to the Word is for our good, so I would like to invite you into an area of my life that I have suffered much in, failed in, and been taught how to navigate.
I tried to justify the verbal, physical, and emotional abuse within the four walls of my family’s home while growing up. For years after the unavoidable divorce between my parents, I tried to outrun the brokenness that cut my hopeful path off all day, each day.
Honor the earthly father who damaged me beyond measure? The one who scarred us and strove to keep himself on a pedestal in front of our large congregation of friends and family? Honor the one who kept us from nutrition until malnourishment?
My only answer is …. absolutely.
It’s not because I feel like honoring him, but my desire to act in obedience to the Lord far surpasses the hurts of this world and the brokenness of my home.
I didn’t get to where I currently am without a great deal of ongoing work, deep personal prayer, the prayers of others, and professional help, all while walking through the murky waters of mental illness due to, yes, trauma.
Some days I can barely breathe under the weight of my forever decision, but my answer remains a wholehearted “yes.”
Here’s my conviction: obedience to God equals freedom. As I was growing up, I didn’t feel free. I didn’t feel protected. I felt lonely. I felt scared. And this fear broke the heart of my heavenly Father. Yet now, I can only imagine what He was protecting me from and continues to protect my family from to this day.
“Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.” This is from God’s word in Exodus 20:12 and was not written as a careless command by our Father who had no idea of what was to come in our days. It is a command full of promise and incentive when obeyed.
I would not know Jesus like I know Him today, unless the restless tide would have kept pushing me to utterly cry out to God in need of a safe place to begin to heal.
Please hear me on this, my friends, honor does not mean trust. It does not mean you keep walking into danger’s door. I haven’t been alone with my dad in years. He’s not a safe person for me. We do talk on the phone when I’m up to it.
My dad is in his final stage of Alzheimer’s, and that truly grieves me. I miss what could’ve been. But praise God, in his illness, he is so kind, so gentle, so humble. And I’ll remember this shift forever even though he doesn’t remember me at all.
He is almost to the end of his time here on earth. But in the messiness of my obedience in honoring my father, my hope is that God would let me be here for many years to come as a result of God’s navigation of the turbulent waters I have dove into for 53 years. He has carried me to where I could touch the sand time and time again.
Thank you, my friends, for your grace as I desire to continue to honor Dennis, even after his time here on earth is past.
Praise be to God guiding me to transfer my trust from my earthly father to my Heavenly Father. That has been very difficult for me. Praise be to God for His protection before I understood I was in danger.
I’ve paid thousands of dollars to be able to say, “it wasn’t my fault.” Forgiving my dad came way before he asked, but Scripture doesn’t call us to wait for the ask. It has ushered the honor into my life. Jesus is my rescuer and strength, and furthermore, my view miles past the sandbar that helps me keep hope ahead while keeping flashes from the past in the past.
Honor. I can’t do it on my own. Let’s keep asking God for strength to obey. We want to live long in what God has promised to you and to me.
Meet the Author!
Lover of diet coke and long strolls at the mall, Stacee Goetzinger is an author, speaker, wife, mother, daughter and friend. Psalm 118:17, "I will not die but live, and proclaim what the Lord has done," is her life verse and describes her passion to allow God to use the pain of a lengthy battle with mental illness and an eating disorder to write and speak words of hope, courage and life.
Connect with Stacee at Speakoutloud.me.