Contradiction

I am going to be honest. There are more than a few passages in the Bible that I have trouble with, that leave me scratching my head thinking Surely God, surely you don't mean that? But the one that has been more difficult for me than anything else, that I have turned over and over in my mind and that has troubled my heart for a long time is Exodus 20:12: Honour your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you.

I was born into an extremely dysfunctional household, one where abuse was constant and the tension was palpable. I am the second youngest child of my father's third marriage, only girl amongst a pack of rough and tumble boys, born 11 years after my next eldest brother due to the fact that my mother did not want to bring another child into such a volatile environment.

The abuse I experienced was in a small part physical, but was mostly emotional. My father, a chronic alcoholic, possessed an unpredictable temperament, and when he'd spent his nights at the pub, none of us was sure whether the happy or violent drunk would greet us at the back door. But it was not merely his alcoholism that was to blame, his violent temper, or the threat of it, was used in the way a toddler throws a tantrum to get their own way, and if we dared question him we were guaranteed sore limbs soon after.

So where was my mother in all this? At the time she was our rock, holding everything together, or at least trying to. She was gentle but firm, and instilled in us a great sense of justice and fairness - which I think made life at home even more difficult for me to understand. Even as the years went on, and separations and reunions continued much to my dismay (I must have been the only child who would have been happy to see my parents divorced), I continued to view my mother as a heroine. Recently though, I have begun to question my mother's spiritual decision to stay with my father, especially as it put us, as young children, directly in harm's way. Knowing what I know now, I realise I am back at square one with no idea where I stand.

So this is what it comes down to: it has taken me up until only six months ago, to realise that both my parents have failed me in major ways. Now I know that we are all going to fail as parents on some levels, and as human beings we can never be perfect, but are some failures avoidable?

This is what I want to ask, and keep wrestling and struggling and getting myself into trouble about: if, as a parent, you perpetrate abuses of that responsibility (physical, violent, sexual, negligence), do you void your right to be honoured by your children? I don't struggle with honouring my mother, as much as I do my father. How do I reconcile honour with someone who has made my childhood a place I'm never likely to revisit with much fondness?



*NB. My father passed away almost 10 years ago. How I've reacted to that is a whole other story, or maybe not.