How Healing Your Inner Child Blesses Your Children

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I’ve learned that I can’t heal myself, and that’s the true blessing I’ve been forced to accept as a young mother. This seems ironic, given the title of this piece, I know. I’ve discovered that the best way to bless my children is by pointing them to the only One who can fully, completely, and radically heal and transform them: Christ Jesus.

However, I am an advocate for Christian therapy. In fact, last month marked six years that I have attended counseling. I battle Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Secondary Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, so I recognize the value of and implement the necessary strategies that come from God-ordained counsellors. (Bonus points when you find a therapist who does their job so well that it’s not about sitting in your feels and feeling validated, but about recognizing where you should challenge yourself to grow, stretch, change, forgive, etc.)

Good therapy, the soul work it requires, isn’t comfortable. I know this from personal experience. And one of the few reasons I’m willing to face my own demons is so that, through God Almighty, they are slain and don’t wreak havoc on my household, controlling my heart and causing me to damage my children.

Will I still damage my sons in one way or another? Of course. I’m imperfect, which means the mothering methods I employ won’t always be perfect, and sometimes, the imperfect ones are ugly. Between the sensory overload, sleep deprivation, constant stimulation, endless demands, and the lack of time for personal care (let alone hygiene), it’s easy to dip my toes into angry waters. Besides all of those mothering responsibilities, life continues to roll over you at times, with marital struggles, financial crises, endless errands, and career demands that leave your heart and soul with little fuel for your babies.

No doubt, my sons will eventually pick up on some of my OCD habits, the compulsive behaviors I loathe. They will ask questions, and I will have answers. But the answers will often be, “OCD beat me today, but by God’s grace, I’m trying again tomorrow.” Oh, how I pray they don’t inherit this disorder through genetics or my inability to maintain the counteractive skills I’ve gained from therapy and wise counsel.

Regardless of the days I fail them (and fail them BIG), I want to share with you how important it is to address the parts of you that need healing and how facing those experiences (or maybe even childhood scars) will be used by God to bless your children for generations to come:

1. You Exemplify Humility and Dependence on God

Over the past year or so, I’ve been intentional in noting just how often pride is at the root of nearly everything I do. Whether it’s posting a cool mom hack or a thought from Jesus, I still want you to notice my wisdom and grace. If it’s showing up a few minutes early to help you decorate for the party, it’s because I want you to keep liking me (and maybe even like me most amongst all of your friends). Many things we do daily are subtly rooted in maintaining our image and ensuring we remain elevated above someone, somewhere, if only to feel better about ourselves.

But when you have a mental disorder, that’s one thing you can’t tidy up. Sometimes, you can’t even hide it. My compulsive behaviors can be quite obvious, especially when my hands are raw and red, cracking and bleeding, from how often I wash them. Other OCD compulsions aren’t as well understood by society, so they aren’t as easily spotted, but they are there when you know what to look for. And I have loved ones who are quick to call me out when I cave.

Having a disorder that greatly damaged your childhood forces you to realize your complete dependency on God, as you must address old wounds to lean into the grace and freedom God offers today. As you tackle what hurt you and likely still hurts today, do so with God as your physician. You can try bandaging yourself up on your own, but you know, deep down, that you can only be so persistent for so long. Your energy will deplete. Your patience will run dry. Outside antics will mess with your ability to battle those demons.

So humbly give them to God, allowing your children to see your weaknesses. Let them see your humanity. After all, when you are honest with those weaknesses that you’ll never escape so long as you live in sinful flesh, God’s grace gets loud. And what better sound can you fill your home with than the grace of God?

“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” 2 Corinthians 12:9

Photo credit: ©GettyImages/Galina Zhigalova

2. You Encourage Them to Seek Wise Counsel

I read a study last year that shared how your children are primarily shaped by you and your spouse for the first few years, and by roughly age 12, they will start looking to their peers for life advice. When I consider who I was as a preteen, this is terrifying.

However, that’s the beauty of healing on earth. It isn’t a one-time thing. It’s certainly not linear. And it will always, always, always require the power of our good God. This means that no matter how old your child is, and no matter who they desire to gain “wisdom” from, they will have plenty of opportunities to see you allowing God to heal you.

Even when you feel that you’ve overcome childhood wounds, new circumstances will rear their ugly heads. Newer relationships will crumble. Lies will be told. Doctors' appointments won’t go as planned. Someone will get fired, someone will back into a pole in the parking lot, and someone will make you want to say choice words as they cut you off in traffic.

While we like to limit healing to childhood wounds or habitually damaging circumstances, each time we sin, we are given the chance to heal. God grants our souls the opportunity to repent and to look to Him for wise counsel and healing.

Be faithful in leaning into God to bind up your wounds (Psalm 147:3). Your children, whether they want to or not, will see your example and recognize that God is their ultimate counselor, the ultimate source of knowledge and wisdom and healing.

“Your testimonies also are my delight; they are my counselors.” (ESV) Psalm 119:24

3. You Show Them How to Forgive the Past

Forgiveness is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, which means we can’t cultivate it on our own (Galatians 5:22-23). This is why it’s dire that you seek God as you work to find healing for childhood wounds. Forgiveness in human hands is weak and far too susceptible to bitterness, judgment, unhealthy reservation, and eventual isolation from others.

Recognize this human tendency and allow the Spirit to teach you to release the bitterness and hurt from the past. Of course, what happened to you will undoubtedly live on in your mind. Things will trigger you. There will be hard days on this side of heaven. I never want to neglect the trauma or hardships you endured.

However, I want you to find the freedom that comes through Christ’s forgiveness, and I want you to unlock it so beautifully that your children recognize and adopt this same pattern.

The hard truth I’ve (kind of) accepted is that something will hurt my babies along the way. It might not stem from me (though sometimes it certainly will), but outside circumstances or hateful people will plant seeds of hurt, doubt, or anger in their hearts. Even still, when they have a mother and father who have shown them how to keep their hearts tilled, their hearts’ soil fresh with forgiveness, they are far more apt to rebuke bitterness and continue growing in the love and nurture of the Lord.

Matthew 13:24-29 (NIV) shares a gardening metaphor that showcases our need to not only accept that damage is inevitable, but that bitterness is best left in the past, and healing is best left in the hands of Jesus:

Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.

“The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’

“‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.

“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’

“‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them...”

Healing with Your Children

We eat meals with our children, go on vacation with our children, and share the daily routine of life with our children, so why not heal with our children? In a fallen world, each member of your household will constantly need to find healing from something, whether you need to reconcile your childhood or your child needs to make amends with school friends.

I pray that healing is a family attribute you proudly live out, and that each of you looks to the Great Physician for total freedom:

“He said, ‘If you listen carefully to the Lord your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, who heals you.’” Exodus 15:26 (NIV)

Related:

3 Ways to Heal from Past Wounds and Be a Parent at the Same Time

Photo credit: ©GettyImages/d3sign

Peyton Garland is an author, editor, and boy mama who lives in the beautiful foothills of East Tennessee. Subscribe to her blog Uncured+Okay for more encouragement.