Ephesians 6
¹Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right.

The part that is often left off when quoting this scripture is the part “in the Lord”. A parent in the Lord would never ask their child to lie or to steal…. but one who doesn’t know the Lord might.

² Honour thy father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise;

This mother and father are the ones that are in the Lord… we are talking about Christians mothers and fathers who are in fact ACTUALLY serving the Lord. The fraudulent parent who claims to know Jesus is not included. So we are speaking of Parents who are leading by example. These parent fear the Lord and will show their Children this by acting in obedience to the Lord. They have consistent characters...meaning they are the same in public among others as they are in their home with just their family.
My parents were not these people. My parents had problems and I’ll leave it at that because it isn’t necessary to expose the issues to open up and discuss this topic.
My mother and father were disordered in their way of dealing with me and their disordered parenting caused me to feel as if I always had to earn their love…. that there was no grace or mercy really. I could also be punished for sins I never committed. This had a scarring effect on me as an adult.
What people may not realize is that we transfer to God the feelings we have about our own parents much of the time. While we may realize that God is GOD and our parents are flawed humans like everyone else… we can still unwittingly transfer to God the same way of relating that we learned from our own parents.
“Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.” William Makepeace Thackeray
Our mothers and our fathers are our first Gods… or at least the first God like entity we relate too. When we are born our mothers and fathers supply all of our needs, they feed us, change us, cuddle us, provide a safe environment to live in… they are acting like God in that they supply all of our needs. Later when we learn of the real God, we transfer these same feelings of complete dependence onto him….so if a parent was careless with their duties , we will have things to work through when we get to know the actual God, creator of heaven and earth, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And that’s how I arrived at the cross, rather broken mentally and emotionally.
My parents treated me like I was a burden, I transferred that to God and felt I was a burden to him. My parents love was conditional, they said it wasn’t but, it was…and I transferred this to God and felt like I had to earn love. My parents were never pleased or delighted by me, and I transferred this to God and thought I was less than every other person. My father burdened me with his career…and what I mean by that is, I was told that if I messed up, it would reflect badly on his career and that would be all my fault, in fact one of the worse beating I ever got was because I fought with my brother because he stole my bike and was destroying it…. for the first time in my life I allowed my rage to take over and was so angry I hit my brother, something I had always been far too afraid to do. My father saw it, there on the army base…. he called us in, shut the door and beat us with a utility extension cord then lectured us about how we were going to cost him his job while smacking my legs with the cord if he felt I wasn’t listening. Absolutely terrifying. I kept fearing blowing it with God and being beyond redemption. My mother used to say that a mother loves all of her children, but she loves the first child the most…and of course I was the second of two children. I always felt below everyone else at Church.
So you see, the way we are treated by our parents matters, and we will often transfer the same expectations of treatment we had with our parents onto God. The reason is that we accept the narrative our parents have about ourselves. It has taken me 40 years of working to identify the lies I believed and replacing the lies with the truth.

³ That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.

⁴ And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

This is vital….so very vital. I have forgiven my parents for these things, and I hope my children forgive me for the places where I got things wrong. My parents were wounded coming into parenting…. I could share their life story, but there is no point, just that they were born after the great depression to people who weren’t educated and who struggled to get everything they had. The depression parents lost their children often and as a result were emotionally stingy. My father had 2 siblings die and his father had to build coffins while his mother pieced scraps together for a liner for her sons. My grandmother was so wounded by the loss of her two sons and the spiritual abuse at the hands of my great-grandmother, that she ended up living her life in a mental institution. My mother was raised with an alcoholic father who routinely gambled away his pay. So my parents came with their own damages and, without repairing those things, they had children and passed them on.
I still wanted to honor my parents though, I just do it differently. I list all the things they got right… and leave the things they got wrong at the cross. God is repairing the damages…one by one…. he’s got me. So… to honor my parents… behold the list of things my parents got right

My mother was an excellent example of a homemaker. She was consistent. She knew how to budget even in extreme times, she always paid our bills, she paid the electric, water, gas, cable, phone or rent/mortgage on time every single month. Not only that, but she was frugal with her shopping and often did without to give to my brother and I. She may have cooked cheap foods, but she cooked them very well, and they were delicious and nutritious. She could throw a party with all kinds of foods like no one else I’ve ever met, she was known for her excellent hosting. If she knew what your favorite food was and knew you were coming to one of her parties, she made sure to make it for you. Our home was always tidy…. we always had clean clothes to wear and a clean bed to sleep in. My mother was also a problem solver… if something came up and I went to her, she would help me to solve my problem.

My father was an earner. It was never enough to have a single job, he always had what he called “side hustles” where he would rebuild cars or furniture and sell it. He tried to please my mother and take her places even though his body was in pain. He knew how to make others feel good about themselves and would go out of his way to find a way to connect with others. He was FUNNY. He loved making people laugh. He was a survivor… a true MacGuyver… I once saw him fix a mechanical problem in his RV on the side of the road with a coke can and some dental floss. Because of his never say die attitude, I always felt safe with him. He was a good provider.