Listening to God instead of Unspoken Family Rules
BP63
Sarah was fifteen when she killed her father. She should have known better. She did not use a weapon to murder her father like a firearm or a knife. No, she was the dangerous weapon who killed him—specifically, her anger.
Sarah expressed her frustration toward her father quite often. After all, she was a teenager who spoke her mind and her father was an alcoholic who often said stupid things when he was inebriated. Together, they were a volatile combination, but no one ever thought it was a lethal combination. Sarah tried hard not to disrespect her father even on those occasions when she hated what he said. She was a follower of Jesus who wanted to obey the command in Ephesians 4 to be angry but to not sin in her anger.
Besides, Sarah obeyed an unspoken rule in the family code that only dad could be the angry one. Everyone in the family obeyed this rule—even Sarah’s mother.
The tragic occasion the unspoken rule was violated came on one of those perfect storm days. Sarah was angry with herself for doing poorly on a test at school and very frustrated with her boyfriend who backed out on a date with her so he could go hunting with his friends. So, when her father slurred out his 1,000th complaint about how all her church friends were nothing but prissy fakers, she lost it.
In an unprecedented moment of unbridled anger, Sarah blew up at her father and told him he was nothing but a pathetic drunk. Unaware that her grandfather had often accosted her father with the exact same words when he was a young man, Sarah was totally shocked when her father became apoplectic with rage.
The man jumped out of his lawn chair as fast as his obese and inebriated body could move and stumbled toward Sarah cursing at the top of his voice. His hand was raised as if he was going to strike his daughter, something he had never done before. His face was the face of a grotesque gargoyle.
Before the irrational man could reach Sarah, he collapsed face-first into the grass. He never moved again. He had died of the dreaded widow maker heart attack.
Sarah blamed herself for her father’s death. It was obvious that her anger had killed him. It did not help that her mother made a comment as the paramedics were taking his body away suggesting that Sarah had stomped on her father’s deepest wound with her harsh words. Her mother said it only once, but it was enough. Sarah would never forget her mother’s careless comment. She pulled it out and rehearsed it whenever she fell into the mineshaft of self-blame.
Sarah never broke the unspoken family rule again, the one that stated that only the man of the house could be angry. She never even raised her voice after the day she killed her father. She always swallowed it—her anger–even if it only manifested in the form of mild irritation. In the months and years that followed, Sarah was known for being the most calm, level-headed person in the family. Many regarded her as a saint because she was always patient and nice.
There was only one problem. Sarah was not developing healthy attributes of self-control or patience. She was not becoming a saint. No, she was not cultivating the character of Christ. She was working hard to merely suppress any strong emotions she had—to not be honest about what went on inside of her. She was living a lie—looking good on the outside but storing up anger on the inside that she medicated with closet drinking and a growing list of mental health medications.
Years later, Sarah developed high blood pressure and migraines as her anger began to leak out in other ways since the well shaft to her heart had been shut down and growth had been supplanted by developing a false self.
In the name of obeying unspoken family rules, she was disobeying God’s command to be angry in a healthy, honest, self-disclosing kind of way.
Sarah’s story may seem extreme, but there are many stories like hers where people live in obedience to unspoken family rules only to become emotionally and physically sick because of obedience to false commandments that are not from God. Our Creator does not want us to hide our emotions or try to be good or live in anxiety about terrifying consequences if we are honest with others as well as ourselves. He wants us to express our emotions and needs through The Well so we won’t experience the alternatives: The Leakage or The Volcano.
There is a huge difference between self-control and suppression; between patience and passivity; between being loving and being nice. The first attribute in each pair is developed through long-term growth while the latter one is a mask that one places over one’s true face.
Don’t settle for the substitutes often embraced due to family rules that all contribute to emotional distance and dishonest hiding. They are not godly attributes but deadly counterfeits that separate you even from your own heart.
Remember: One of the most important bedrock truths of Designer Therapy for Life is that Jesus came to restore relationship and an experience of God’s Presence because Satan and sin are all about separation. Presence versus Separation. Relationship as opposed to aloneness. Herein lies the battle of the universe.
There are many voices that contribute to separation and aloneness besides unspoken family rules. What are these voices that have been addressed in other posts? Vows that we made as children, Satan’s accusations and lies, our sin-distorted hearts and minds, the current culture. Fortunately, God’s word exists to point us toward truth instead of lies and toxic coping skills.
Good old Proverbs 3:5,6 is applicable here: Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He will direct your steps.
Always start with the wise counsel of God before you make up your own subjective view of the universe.
Today, we’re looking specifically at the internalized voice of unspoken family rules. Where do they come from and what are some other examples besides the rule in Sarah’s family that only the male/father is allowed to be angry?
Unspoken family rules can spring up in any generation as sinful behaviors like addictions and control that the other family members then respond to with co-dependency, anxiety, or downright terror. The frightening aura that accompanies rage, violence, abuse, and domination prompts many of us to avoid the mine field of an angry person or at least to walk very carefully as we tiptoe through it. Unfortunately, the unspoken family rules that produce avoidance, caretaking and tiptoeing all allow the dark bullying behaviors to continue unchallenged.
Other times, unspoken rules are codified as a reaction to past family secrets that might be a century or two old. Family members learn at a young age to be careful because the kryptonite of shame is always lurking just beyond conscious awareness. If you make the mistake of getting pregnant outside of marriage or being thrown in jail, you will awaken the shameful and terrifying Kraken that has cursed generations of your family with its ugly presence.
So, what are some examples of these unspoken family rules? I will list but a few since there are many and they vary from family to family.
+ Do not hurt mother because she will disintegrate emotionally. She will then need to be reminded multiple times that she is not a total failure as a parent; otherwise, she will fall into a deep depression and possibly even require hospitalization.
+ Do not separate from mother emotionally or physically because she will perceive such a deep abandonment that she might die—literally.
+ Do not challenge father because he will either give you the silent treatment for days or months or shoot the messenger who dared to call him out. (These dreaded consequences may indeed follow the challenge but should not hold the other family members hostage due to a fear of what will happen when truth is spoken).
+ I am responsible for the emotional equilibrium of my mother or father. I will never be able to fully leave and cleave when I get married because I am a surrogate spouse to my parent.
+ Tolerate the inappropriate rage of my brother (or sister) because something bad will happen if the mini-Napoleon is reigned in.
+ Males are inherently irresponsible and are to be treated as the black sheep of the family.
+ Females are weak and are to be controlled by others.
+ Tears are a sign of weakness and must be avoided at all costs.
+ Self-sufficiency is the hallmark of adulthood and dependency is the same as infantilism. Grow up!
+ Do not discipline a child or he/she will somehow be damaged.
+ Never say no to sons and daughters or they will hate you forever and will cut you out of their lives.
+ All authority figures are narcissistic and inherently untrustworthy so never submit to them.
+ The only acceptable male is a soft son who takes care of all females.
+ The only acceptable male is a jock who uses women, shoots deer, and talks tough.
+ You must be nice to everyone and never hurt them by saying no.
+ The female is to be a nice person and never set boundaries with others—especially men.
+ A woman must be hypersexualized to be loved.
+ If you set boundaries with someone, they will leave you.
+ If someone is angry with you, they are right, and you are wrong.
+ If you are angry, you are right and everyone else is wrong.
+ God the Father is like dad the father and wants to use you for His divine benefit.
Are you able to identify an unspoken rules in your family that are never uttered aloud but are silently binding on everyone even if they are not fully conscious of them?
If you can identify some of these rules, can you see how they create distance and hiding in your family system? Remember, hiding and avoiding are promoted by the prince of darkness. Jesus came to invite you into truth. The words of John 3:21 say, But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.
The challenge for all of us is to make sure we know what voice we’re listening to in our heads and hearts. Is the voice we hear from the light or from the darkness? Does it increase relationship and presence, or does it speak against them and serve as a blockade to intimacy (into me, see)?
So, forsaking unspoken rules and turning toward Jesus is about running into the light, being transparent, being seen, confessing sin to one another, approaching others and the throne of God with confidence. Obeying unspoken family rules and turning your back on Jesus will cultivate a heart that prefers the oxymoronic safety of darkness, that purposely is opaque so others cannot see into your deepest soul, that hides sin and avoids others as well as God.
Nothing good every comes from obeying the rules if the rules are opposed to God’s call to our hearts for healthy relatedness.
There is a story told of a young woman, Aly, who married into the Goodspeed family. This family had long lived with an unspoken rule to not ask questions of the father because his countenance always became forbidding when anyone dared query him about personal matters.
The new in-law, oblivious to the family rule, one day asked her father-in-law why he often looked so angry. The older man turned and stared stonily at his curious new daughter long enough for her to retract her question and change the subject like everyone else always did. When she did not take back her question but simply sat in silence waiting for her father-in-law to answer, everyone in the family became tense and collectively cleared their nervous throats.
To their amazement, their father’s flinty face eventually softened, and he remarked, “I have never believed that anyone cared enough to listen to me—not really. If I can scare them off with a look, why would I trust that they won’t do the same when I grant them access to my messy soul?”
What an amazing story!
The application here is to identify and push past the unspoken family rules (and vows, and Satan’s lies, and the condemnation of your own heart and mind, and the culture’s warning to hide the true self) that you blindly follow and instead obey the words of your Savior who says, Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ ~ Ephesians 4:15
Love others truly and deeply, but don’t exchange your love for niceness to avoid the wrath of humans. Don’t adjust yourself for the emotional fragility of another who requires that you become somebody other than who you are so they don’t have to become someone they currently are not but need to be.
Be and become the genuine self God created you to be. As His child, you are here to hear only His voice, not all the other voices in your head. So be the sheep that hears the voice of the Shepherd. He will present you blameless before the glory of His presence with great joy!
The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me? ~ Hebrews 13:6
And when they had brought them, they set them before the council. And the high priest questioned them, saying, ‘We strictly charged you not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and you intend to bring this man’s blood upon us.’ But Peter and the apostles answered, ‘We must obey God rather than men.’ ~ Acts 5:27ff