Intentional Parenting 6: Feeling Disempowered
Faced with the challenge of a VERY spicy daughter, my old parenting paradigm was not holding up. I felt it was all my fault. Through therapy and wrestling with hitherto unacknowledged parts of me, I have come to realise I was operating from an insecure, anxious, and thoroughly disempowered mindset.
If you’ve been following my journey so far, you might well have finished the last post with a sense of relief. Perhaps like me, you’ve never really seen yourself as a powerful person. You have more-or-less washed along with life. Parenting is just something you’ve picked up, and sought to do your best based on what you know. And that has been enough. It’s been okay. Alright. Perhaps. Until now.
Very possibly something has changed of late. Something has, or is shifting. There is an imbalance in your soul which is causing you to rethink life, relationships, parenting, your place in this world.
And that was me. Faced with the challenge of a VERY spicy daughter, my old parenting paradigm was not holding up. Trying to parent the way I imagined my own parents would have, was not working. And what I was trying to change did not make a difference. In the end I felt it was all my fault. I was in fact a FAILURE.
I’ve recently learned how that feeling went deeper than a parenting failure. I had developed a deep-rooted identity. An understanding that I am not worthy unless I am doing something worthy. That any love I receive is conditional. And when it is not received, it is due to something I am doing, or not doing. I felt in fact UNWORTHY.
Through therapy and wrestling with hitherto unacknowledged parts of me, I have come to realise I was operating from an insecure, anxious, and thoroughly disempowered mindset. I saw myself at the mercy of circumstances, and without agency to change anything around me, except, perhaps, my clothes. I did in fact believe myself to be a VICTIM.
In the glorious light of hindsight I can now tell you how wrong I was. This was not an overnight transformation or a switch that clicked immediately. It has been gradual and sure. Slow and solid. Little-by-little and bit-by-bit.
Over time I have come to recognise that I do have power. I do have agency. There are things I can change! And there are some things—like other people—that I cannot. As the famous Serenity Prayer says, I need the wisdom to understand which is which.
It was in this disempowered state that I blamed others for my woes. A deep-seated root of resentment had grown inside, and I felt that everyone else was to blame. If they didn’t have such high expectations! If only they could handle more. If only that person was different.
Quite simply I had forgotten who God is, who I am, and who others are. My heart was blinded to the immense, connected, powerful presence of God within me—and inside others. My thinking was corrupted by the cultural norms of power-over, separation, and conditional love. I was operating outside of God’s perfect connected design. And it was shrivelling me up inside.
Yet, praise God, here was Wendy explaining a different way. And I was rejecting it! Yes, it was that slow. But, but, but I thought. I am a victim. I am disempowered. I am at the mercy of the circumstances around me.
And, praise God, Wendy was ever so patient! Compassionately walking with me through the stages of rejection, refusal, confusion, and consolation. It was a time when others around me did not know what to say. It felt like a foreign concept in my community—the prevailing attitude was that we’re sinful worms fortunate to receive any mercy in this life. The imputed righteousness of Jesus is the only thing that matters, a ticket to heaven, not assurance of any earthly blessing.
In this changed, new, empowered mindset I consciously choose to reject that paradigm. In Jesus I am a new creation, indwelt by his presence, empowered by his Spirit, and loved by his Father. My eyes are open to this love and its impact starts now. I don’t need to wait until heaven. With early saints like Athanasius of Alexandria, I look forward to becoming more like Jesus, diving deeper into the divine dance and living as Jesus did whilst here on earth, participating in the works of his—and my—Father.
I am not disempowered. I am not a victim of circumstance. I am not without agency. In fact, like that stormy night on the lake (Matthew 14:22-33) Jesus is calling me out of my familiar boat onto the choppy waters. Like his disciple Peter, he is inviting me to defy the ‘natural’ laws of the culture around us, and walk out into the deceptive waves of separation, oppression, and conditional acceptance. And that is what I seek to do.
Join me next time as I explore what that means for my nervous system, and deep-rooted cultural programming.
