Abusive Parenting
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How I Learned that God is Good
God is good all the time. All the time, God is good. I hear that at church a lot, but that isn’t where I learned that God is, indeed, good. Humans must acquire some kinds of knowledge experientially because an intellectual assent isn’t belief. The dictionary allows for both, citing belief an acceptance of a statement as truth and as confidence or trust in something. In spiritual matters, merely intellectually consenting to God’s goodness can still leave one staring in terror at the inevitable void. We acquire the ability to rest in the knowledge of God’s goodness through the slow process of building a relationship. Ironically, I learned that God…
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Parental Alienation: 6 Signs It’s Happening to You
Many couples in the midst of an acrimonious divorce toss around the term, parental alienation, to describe the effects of one parent badmouthing another. This often happens when one person seems particularly at fault in a divorce. I think everyone can agree that criticizing one parent to a child is unhealthy at best and abusive at worst. But this isn’t parental alienation. I recently heard about a four-year-old boy whose mother had left him and his father unexpectedly. Understandably both were devastated. Understandably the father felt a need to process this. He would launch into his rehearsal of the sudden separation and divorce and almost as if on cue, his…
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Seven Signs of a Narcissistic Mother
My heart always nosedives when I meet the victim of a narcissistic mother. They are usually some of the nicest people you will ever meet, though it may be difficult to get to know them. When they come for prayer ministry, it isn’t the presence of bad memories making it difficult for them to heal. While bad memories are plentiful, the lack of good memories is actually more of a barrier. And while abusive fathers are bad enough, a narcissistic mother in some ways is far worse. Mothers are crucial to the development of the internal self of a baby. A child whose mother is incapable of meeting basic emotional…
