Love Empowers Heart-level Connection

[from the archives]

The events of my last few blog posts (starting here) brought a complete change in Phillip. Before I began to meet with him each morning and love on him Phillip was closed, emotionally cold with an undercurrent of anger, resistant, willing and able to comfortably lie to me, isolated both physically and emotionally, and mostly silent. These were things only his siblings and I could tell. My friends would have described Phillip as polite, smart, respectful, service-minded and hard working. So many parents feel that being respectful and hard working is the goal of character, especially if it is combined with significant Bible knowledge and church activity. Phillip was all of these things, but his actual character—the sum of his relational habits—was not Christlike (self-sacrificially loving) at all.

As I’ve described in previous blog posts, Phillip began to soften as I stopped shaming him and showering him with disapproval and I started daily loving on him with physical affection and affirming words. He was less stiff, and he began to talk with me a bit, but after his day of repentance, which I wrote about in my last blog post, he was totally different.

He became eager to be with me. He not only looked deep into my eyes, but he beamed when I looked back. He began to return my affection by putting his arms around me, surrendering his face to be kissed and returning my, “I love you,” with “I love you too, Mommy.” He became hungry for a clean conscience. Every morning when we met, I looked in his eyes and asked him, “How is your conscience?” He would beam back at me with full bright eye contact as if he was just waiting for me to ask so that he could say, “It’s fine and clean.” His desire to hear me talk about love and the ways of the Lord became insatiable, and he eagerly did anything I suggested or asked and more, bringing back his new thoughts and observations to me about everything.

Phillip’s change was just as radical and instant as my mom’s had been. You can read about my mom’s miraculous transformation in Marilyn Howshall’s book Empowering the Transfer of Moral Values and Faith, or in the book and audio packet, Remembering Ellen. I began to see a pattern that I’ve seen again and again now. Phillip’s process was a direct mirror of our process of being reconciled to the Lord. Once Phillip was receiving my love and beginning to obey, he was able to receive more of my love. He continued to obey more eagerly as his heart was being turned to me. He began to take up my concerns as his own, making what was important to me important to him. When he believed that his sin had brought death to my dog, he was overcome with grief because he was beginning to love me, after I had loved him first. His sorrow over his sin was about how it wounded and hurt me. His full confession and repentance drew our hearts together as I showered him with forgiveness and love. This produced in him a heart to heart connection with me where he embraces my desires for him and for others with his whole heart.

This is the process of reconciliation. We begin to see that we are not obeying the Lord as we examine the way we relate with our family. Many stop there and heap shame upon themselves, showering themselves with disappointment believing wrongly that the shame and disapproval comes from God. They continue to serve their own version of God crying out for him to change them, and heaping more disappointment on themselves because they just aren’t changing.

If we continue toward reconciliation, we begin to obey in small ways by willfully withholding unloving behavior from spilling out over our family. We begin to work harder at being loving and obeying our conscience. As we do this we begin to experience more peace in our hearts and a lightness, and a bit of the fruit of love in our relationships which is the approval of God. Many stop there outwardly being compliant, but their hearts are still full of attitudes, intentions, and motivations of self-will, self-ways, and all the other self-focused stuff that is habitual.

If we press on toward reconciliation, we exert all our effort toward changing our own attitudes, intentions and motivations, and we begin to ask, “How can I escape this temptation and constant nagging of selfishness in me?” just as Phillip began to ask. And the answer is the same from the Lord to you as it was from me to Phillip, “Come to me, and confess it so that I can strengthen your resolve and help you with plans to overcome.” Many stop here and see their temptation as shameful and disappointing, withdrawing from God promising themselves to do better but lacking in the resolve to do it alone.

If we keep going, melting into God’s encouragement, instruction and approval, like Phillip was with me, we begin to take up His concerns, like Phillip took up mine. We begin to fill our hearts with the desires of His heart, as we see our family differently, looking through His eyes at their need and his desire to find and save the lost, beginning with our own family. We take on His love for them, partnering with him in the activity required to draw hearts toward Him. Just as Phillip partnered with me in concern for my lost dog. It wasn’t duty to him, or something he just thought he ought to do. He was truly concerned for my dog, because I was concerned about my dog.

If we continue pressing into the Lord in reconciliation, eventually we come to see the truth of how hurtful our self-centered ways are. Although Phillip was mistaken that his sin brought death to my dog, he was receiving in a child understandable way the reality of the suffering that our sin has brought not to God’s dog, but to His son. His sorrow over my dog’s death was not a mental exercise. He wasn’t trying to convince his mind that he should be sad about my dog because that would make him a better son. He wasn’t even trying to secure forgiveness for himself so that he could feel better by being free of guilt. He wasn’t trying to get an experience from me. He wasn’t focused on what his experience with me would do for his life.

He knew from his experience that I was different. In my case it’s because I actually stopped shaming and disapproving of him and started loving on him, but in our case with God, we have to come to know through experience that He is not who we imagined Him to be. Phillip was fully connected in heart to my heart and my desires and connected with my suffering. His sorrow and repentance was entirely focused on me and in connection with me. He no longer wanted to hide from me for his own sake of escaping wrath, he’d come to believe that I would forgive him, and indeed my heart leaped to forgive him and to help him overcome. My joy and delight of having his heart was well worth the death of my dog, and although my dog didn’t rise from the dead, my son did.

Thank You Lord!

To Learn more about reconciling your relationships with your kids, read Empowering the Transfer of Moral Values and Faith, followed by the mini coaching programs, Making Heart-Level Connections.

[originally posted October 2010]