The Difference Christ Makes
In Your Children

"My mom is wonderful in most respects. I just wish she would speak up or at least talk to me about her ideas on sex education. She leaves me out on a limb here. I want to do the right thing, but she acts like it is a dark problem which should be kept in the dark!"

   "My mother sent my sister, brother and me to church and Sunday school, but seldom went herself. If she didn't believe in it enough to go, why did she send us?"

   "My mother 'loves' me so much, she considers her ideas about by affairs to be correct and never mine. Perhaps this shouldn't be a complaint, but I wish she'd at least give me a chance to think with her! She is sometimes so domineering about it, she makes me feel like a stranger. Or a criminal."

   "I wish my mother had more will power: (1) to stand up for the good she knows, but doesn't always show to others. (2) To make her children mind when they are wrong, instead of stooping after just reprimanding us. I'm never quite sure of what she really believes."

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   "My mother lacks the ability to express affection."

   "The thing I long for most is for my mother to be a Christian in thought and deed and not just in words."

   "My mother no longer cares about herself or how she looks."

   "My mother lacks self-confidence."

   "My mother can't talk easily to me, nor I to her."

   "I long to be able to talk to my mother about everything. I'm not really trying to hide things. But suddenly a wall goes up between us."

   "My mother is always comparing me with someone else — and I come out on the short end! I want her to love me for myself."

   "My mother always has to be proven right."

   "She doesn't have time for me."

   "Mother is always suspecting me of doing some horrible thing. Actually, she puts ideas in my head!"

   These are direct quotations from high school and college students, both fellows and girls. As a favor to me, they wrote down on slips of paper their ideas of what is wrong with mothers. Now, before all mothers reading this book crawl shamefacedly beneath the living room carpet or fly into womanly rages, let me say that several young people wrote: "There is nothing wrong with my mother." Or, "My mother is just about perfect."

   But after looking at some of the honest complaints of young people, realizing that they all came from Christian homes, I believe some honest self-examination is in order.

   I have not quoted all the remarks by far. I merely singled out the most representative ones and they all show a few things glaringly:

   (1) It is a matter of health or sickness to a child's personality whether or not mother's personality is Christ-controlled.

   (2) Children want their mothers to have strong identities.

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But they also want identities of their own. The girl who said she wished her mother would follow through on her discipline was not alone in this desire. Several others wrote the same thing. Young people don't always see it so clearly, but one of the ways in which parents show love is by discipline. The child wants to feel that the parent is interested enough to follow through. Firm, wise, kindly discipline means that a child is really loved. With the kind of love that cares about the child's personality development.

   (3) Young people care terribly about the appearance of their mother.

   (4) They long to be confidential with her.

   (5) They want her to be sure of her own thinking.

   (6) They want her to express her affection.

   I discovered nothing new from these youngsters. But I felt it would be helpful to quote them. I am convinced that the frightening fact of a mother's ability to mark the lives of her children can never be over expressed. So much has been written about it that some women have confessed they feel like criminals! Others confess boredom. Others resentment at being so important.

   But there is great, good hope. Because if a woman is able to damage her child's personality, she is equally able to mark it creatively. The very fact of a mother's influence on her children is, in itself, a neutral thing. It is neither good nor bad. We must keep this in mind. It is the kind of marks she makes on her child's life that matter. She is equally as capable of marking beautifully as she is capable of making ugly scars.

   This is simply because she is a woman.

   And a mother.

   After all (although this may be a great blow to mother's ego), a newborn baby does not love its mother at all. It merely has the capacity to learn to love. And it is mother who first loves the child into loving her! Many women adore babies,

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but resent the reaction of their own personalities on these little darlings as they grow up. As long as an infant is tiny and helpless, mother usually has a fairly easy time of it emotionally. Her own personality, whatever it is, dominates of necessity. The baby hasn't developed one yet.

   And the very fact that a mother literally smiles the baby into smiling back at her that first glorious time, sets her life-long responsibility to that child.

   She started this love business!

   It is up to her to accept her responsibility all through the years in which the child is with her. Even when he or she is acting like an outsized little hellion.

   Especially then.

   The newborn child does not love its mother. She loves the baby into loving and depending upon her, by caring for him or her. It is she who instigates the child's need for her love. It is she who starts the child's dependence upon her.

   Therefore, it is mother who must continue it through the strange but normal changes which come in the child's personality development.

   One woman wrote: "I am absolutely at sea over my teenaged daughter! She has become so remote and peculiar, I feel she is a stranger. I know you don't have children of your own, but I also know you have talked with hundreds of teenagers and I plead with you to give me a hand up! Do you have any clues which might help me understand my daughter? Is she so different? Have I failed so completely? Or is it normal for a girl in her middle teens to 'go away' from the whole family as my daughter has done? She sits bodily at the table with us at dinner, but as quickly as possible, she finds an excuse not to help me with the dishes and dashes off dramatically to her room, sighing heavily and appearing as remote and other-worldly as possible! She spends most of her

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time in her own room. I understand that she is going through 'that time.' But is my daughter more extreme than most?"

   No.

   She is normal. Apparently this heavy-lidded, highly dramatic, Sarah Bernhardt period varies greatly among teen-aged girls. But it usually comes. It fact, I recently read an excellent article on this subject entitled "She Will Come Back." And she will.

   We older people, in quiet desperation, try to keep our humors at this time. And we should. But we should also remember that we, too, "went away" during our teens. Here again, the golden key to unlocking your child's personality and to keeping his or her heart unlocked, is identification. It is a noble sounding goal to say there must be "togetherness" but between mother and daughter and mother and son. And there must be. But once again, real "togetherness" is the result of identification.

   Depending upon their rate of personality development and also upon their physical development, teen-aged girls do "go away" from their family circle for a period. And I believe it is right here that most women lose their friendships with their daughters. And with their sons. Because boys have a difficult period of adjustment during these years, too. And no amount of badgering or shaming or scolding or ridicule can bring them back to normal. They are already being normal.

   After all, there comes the inevitable time in every teenager's life when the transition just has to be made from childhood to adulthood. It is a tense time for them. A somewhat frightening time in many ways. They pull back toward the dependence of childhood and at the same time they pull toward the brand new world ahead, still to be discovered. Perhaps the pull back toward childhood causes them to appear sullen at times, and to resent their parents. For all of their lives up to now, it has been the thing to do to run to

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mother when things go wrong. Now, suddenly, with the new pull toward maturity, they are embarrassed about doing this. And yet the safety and security of being able to do it still lingers to haunt them. It is involved with mother mainly and so often, they become cross and irritable toward her. And they don't understand why.

   But teenagers are tender. They have not learned compassion yet, but they have all the tenderness of heart to learn it. They can be reached through their hearts. And usually, at this period, they are more easily reached by silent understanding on your part. Don't call attention to the fact that suddenly they're behaving in a peculiar way. They're not. They're just being themselves for their age.

   What a deadly thing it is for us to expect young people to act as though they are middle-aged. (Of course, it is equally as deadly for them to expect us to act as though we are young! But more about their side of it in a moment.)

   It seems the hardest thing for most mothers to accept the fact that they can only actually mould their children's lives to the age of about ten or eleven. From then on, the most that can be done is to influence them. The normal psychological state for a child under ten is utter dependence. The child depends upon her parents for everything. And this is normal. But parents somehow fail to realize that when the child becomes a teenager, their normal psychological state changes.

   The normal state for a teenager is independence.

   He or she wants to begin to discover life personally. Your daughter wants to think for herself. Your son wants to think for himself. It is here that real friendship between parents and children is essential.

   And if, as we saw in some of the actual quotations from young people earlier in this chapter, you, as their mothers have not established an easy, natural rapport with them, they will only travel farther away into their own worlds. They

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still desperately need guidance. But they have begun to think for themselves and they notice and react to the defects in mother's personality. Mother has suddenly become a human being who just could be wrong now and then. They spot your selfishness, your weakness, and although they may let you have it with both barrels in conversation, inwardly they are crushed by what they see. Above all, they want you to be terrific!

   Nothing is so important as the way you look and the way you act and your ability to converse, when you visit the campus on mothers' weekend at college. Nothing is so important as the impression you make before the other students and the faculty when you, on some special occasion, visit the high school which is your teenager's world all day long, five days a week.

   In all fairness to the young people, I don't think you want the best from them one bit more than they long for the best from you.

   But it seems difficult for parents to realize that their children are no longer babies. I admit the transition is fast. Overnight, they seem to be grown up. Grown up and caring about things they never noticed before.

   One charming, wholesome, quite intelligent college freshman said to me not long ago: "I know my mother doesn't have the money to dress expensively. She's putting me through college herself. But I wish she had more calmness and peace about her! She is a Christian, but she is always so nervous and ill at ease."

   And to prove to you that this fine young lady was not merely complaining, she added: "Genie, how can I help my mother? She has done so much for me. How can I help convince her that it isn't necessary for mothers to be jittery and nervous and unpeaceful if they belong to Jesus Christ? She believes all the right things about Him, but she just doesn't

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act like it. Every time I go out on a date, she fidgets until I get back. And when I introduce her to any of my friends, she never knows what to say. I'm actually sorry for her, and I wish I could do something to help!"

   Teenagers are adults in more ways than we give them credit for being. They are perceptive and sensitive, and down in their hearts they want to become successful adults.

   In a note from another young college girl came a striking argument for a Christ-controlled personality if God has given you the responsibility of motherhood:

   "The biggest lack in my mother is her inability to show forth Christian love. She would do anything for me or any member of our family. But she is jealous of my friends and criticizes them constantly. She seems to suspect everyone. I know she must love me, but I can't feel a closeness to her and I can't show her affection or confide in her because she doesn't show love to other people outside of our family! If she would just let herself go and let God's love show through her, I know that together we could win a lot of my non-Christian friends. She shows love to us at home, but not to outsiders. She seems always to be afraid that I'm going to show her up somehow. That she is going to be proven wrong. If she would only just relax and let us love the real woman in her."

   From this mother's standpoint, there may be many valid reasons why her personality has become so warped. One of the easiest traps for a mother to fall into is that of over-caring for her family to the exclusion of outsiders. To take care of your family is, in itself, a good thing. But it falls far short of God's love, because it can become quite quickly an exclusive kind of love. A love that excludes all for whom you feel no special attraction. All who don't in some way add to the image you have built up through the years of yourself as

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a splendid, loving homemaker for the members of your family.

   This young woman longs to love the "real woman" in her own mother. She longs for her mother to be her best self. And the girl sees clearly that the only way this can happen at such a late date (or any date) with her mother is for the woman to allow the love of God to flow through her. His love, remember, is not exclusive. It is all inclusive.

   Evidently this poor woman's mother-love has turned to "smother love." And her daughter is not one bit fooled. In many ways, her daughter is more mature than she.

   So far, we have spoken mainly of the failures of mothers. But I am sure that many of you who read this book will be in the position of the teenagers whom I have quoted.

   What is your responsibility as daughters?

   The same as your mothers'. The glorious, golden key of identification which Christ used to unlock all our hearts is yours to use also. And you must learn to use it.

   The teen years have been called many things. But certainly, for most of you, they are the years of preparation for motherhood. I am fond of telling teenagers that unless they learn now the minute by minute use of the golden key of identification, they will be as troublesome to their children as their parents are to them!

   This is true.

   Some of us never marry. Most people, it seems, do. And so, most likely, you will. Ask God to show you now, while it is still easy to learn, that you intend to cooperate with Him in the use of this golden key of identification. You may say, "But it's easier for my mother to identify with me. After all, she was my age once. I've never been her age!"

   True. But you are reckoning without the availability of the Holy Spirit in your life. He is the Master Identifier. He is One with the Father and with Jesus Christ. And if you ask

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Him and stay open to His promptings, He will give you His love and concern and understanding of your mother.

   In her excellent book for young people The Years That Count (Zondervan), my associate, Rosalind Rinker, tells the story of one college girl who finally took things into her own hands with her somewhat reserved mother. She prayed about it first with two or three of her Christian college friends, then went home for a weekend, believing that God would make an opening for her to ask her own mother to pray with her for the first time.

   He did.

   And a new, close, warm relationship came into being between that mother and daughter which had existed before on only a rather polite basis of family loyalty.

   Mothers are people. Just like you. And if you humble yourself before God first and ask His help in making the right opening, your mother can be approached and God will melt down the barriers. If it doesn't happen the first time, try again. Always believing that He is preparing her heart as well as yours.

   Some of you who read this will have sons or daughters in real trouble. My heart goes out to you. So does the heart of God. Perhaps your son or daughter simply will not confide in you. Whether this has been your fault in the past, perhaps only you know. But humbling yourself before your troubled child can do no harm. It can only accomplish the purpose of love. God humbled Himself before mankind by coming to the earth as one of us. He asks us to humble ourselves before Him. Love seems only able to flow through humility. So, with your heart bowed before the heart of God, do go to your rebellious child and ask him or her to forgive you where you have failed. This may not work at first. But if you persist (not ingratiatingly, but with real humility), you can depend upon the Lord to soften that youngster's heart.

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   I remember one glorious moment behind a coat rack in the basement of a midwestern church seven years ago. I don't remember the name of the mother and her daughter, but the daughter was pregnant and barely seventeen. Somehow she had agreed to come to the Mother and Daughter Banquet where I was speaking. Both were in tears. Both wanted the confidence of the other.

   "There has always been a horrible barrier between Mother and me," the girl sobbed. "How do we get rid of it? I need her now if I ever needed her."

   I answered, "We'll ask God to melt the barrier down."

   "Somewhere along the line I've lost touch with my daughter," the mother wept. "We've tried to talk about this terrible thing that's happened, but we always end up arguing. How can we get rid of this wall between us?"

   I answered, "We'll ask God to melt it away."

   With one arm around each of them and their arms around each other, we did just that. And He melted it away.

   I did nothing but identify with them both. Perhaps you and your daughter need an understanding outsider to do this with you. But perhaps your daughter won't agree to this until you've humbled yourself and asked her help in it, too.

   That outsider could be your minister. It could be a friend. Or a chance acquaintance, as I was with that mother and her daughter seven years ago. God will guide you if you ask Him to do it. But if your own ego and hurt pride stand in the way, simply because your daughter is not, at the moment, a huge success, little will be accomplished. She is still your daughter. You are still her mother. She needs you no more than has ever needed you. If you appear shocked and angry (no matter what she's done!) you are acting totally unChristian. "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us," showing no shock or anger at our being as we are.

   If He is controlling your personality, you will be enabled

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to show the same kind of quiet love. You have full access to His love, because you have full access to Him.

   Perhaps the greatest and kindest thing you could do for your children is to love them into loving Jesus Christ. They are difficult only as their personalities are not under His control. If you have become a Christian late in life, your problem is greater. But your love, which has the enviable and responsible place of having put its roots down into your child's heart first, in babyhood, can be the instrument which Christ uses to reach that heart.

   If you have been a "preachy" mother and railed at your children for not attending church, then this is a different matter. My grandmother did this to me when I was a child, and I made a break from all of it the minute I went away to college! Jesus Christ did not come to condemn or to rail, He came to save. His "longsuffering is our salvation." And He can change you.

   Many of you who read this will be genuine Christian women who want to be good mothers. Your children are also Christian.

   I remember as I write, one attractive woman about my age, who talked to me in a bookstore one day.

   "Genie, the kids aren't afraid to speak up to you. What do you think is wrong with their mothers? I want to know if and where I am failing my daughter. She is in her early teens and before trouble comes, I want to be set right. How far should I go in telling her what she can and cannot do? How far can I go, how far must I go and yet not turn her against Christ in the process?"

   This woman's honesty was one of the first seeds the Lord planted in my mind which prompted the writing of this book. That was two years ago at Mount Hermon, California. That very day, when I spoke to the high schoolers at the same conference, I began collecting answers to the question I have

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since asked over hundreds of miles of hundreds of teenagers: What is wrong with your mother? Some of these answers you have found in this book.

   As to how far you as a mother should go in insisting that your child not do this or that, I believe only the Holy Spirit can tell you exactly. Because only He knows your child and only He knows the circumstances of his or her life, and only He knows how vital is the child's own faith in Jesus Christ. All of these things are relevant. We do not live under religious legalism. I know that many well-meaning Christian parents will refuse to allow their children to attend selected movies and at the same time continually expose their children to gossip and irritability and jealousy and Class B movies on the television set at home. I am not recommending that you allow your child to see selected movies and I am not recommending that you do not. But I am urging you from my heart to let that child see Jesus Christ in control of your personality!

   The Bible does not say that we become Christian or remain Christian because we do not do this or that. But it does say, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved."

   Believing on Him means that we depend upon Him not only for our salvation, but for our dispositions and our wisdom. If you really believe on Him, you can depend upon His giving you personal guidance about each of your children.

   The more I see sincere Christians crowded behind their man-made walls of do's and don'ts, the more I understand why it is that so few outside those walls ever discover Christ. I am not suggesting compromise of any sort. I am suggesting that we need to begin to look squarely at the one central issue: Jesus Christ Himself.

   I have dedicated this book to my own mother because I love her. But I have also done it because she and I have seen

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the theme of this book proven in our own relationship. We were always close. But now that both our personalities are invaded by the Spirit of Christ, we are not only closer than ever before, we have each found a new respect for our personalities in relation to each other.

   Jesus Christ can only mark a child's personality in a completely creative way. If He is in control of a mother's personality, her marks upon her child's life will be creative, too.

   Mothers can be what the greeting card versifiers claim that they are, if they belong to Jesus Christ at the very center of their beings.

   It may seem too late under your particular circumstance. Let me assure you it is never too late if He is on the scene.

Chapter Eleven  ||  Table of Contents