How to Deal With Abusive Parents

This is an exclusive title and my purpose of selecting it was to share some advice on this issue. I deeply hope it will help someone out there. Let me start sharing four verses of the Bible where, in my experience as daughter and parent it has been written in my heart. Nobody said it was easy, but neither impossible to try healthy relationships.

Ephesians 6:1- 4

"Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. HONOR YOUR FATHER AND MOTHER (which is the first commandment with a promise), SO THAT IT MAY BE WELL WITH YOU, AND THAT YOU MAY LIVE LONG ON THE EARTH."Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord."

There is a difference between parental discipline and abusive treatment.Discipline is: training to act in accordance with rules.While that discipline takes place, parents need to be focused that it is all for the best of the child's welfare. Disciplining is to teach the child social rules in order to live in peace with themselves and others. Parents need to learn some strategies in this process if they admit they can not do it alone.

An abusive relation takes place when a person mistreats another. It is very simple to identify an abusive relation. Sometimes in the name of "love" wrong things that shouldn't happen occur. We can identify abusive treatment:

1. Harsh or coarsely insulting language is used.
2. Physically, emotional or sexual abuse.
3. Injurious treatment.

Real love is known by a healthy relationship involving respect, trust, and consideration for the other person. Parents love their children. Perhaps these modern days have influenced negatively in many ways, interrupting families positive relations. Going back to basics may help when:

• Television wasn't kid's day care.
• Fathers knew their responsibilities as head of the family.
• Moms were the love givers attending their homes.

We are living in materialistic existences where money, Internet, cars and other distractions are the rulers creating chaos giving birth to abusive parents.

1 Corinthians 13 says how to identify real love.

Nobody really is born a parent, but we all come from parents. We can learn to be a parent and we can learn to be daughters and sons. If we had an abusive childhood environment, if as an adult we are still submitted to an abusive parent...there is hope. There is no "bad" that lasts forever.

If you are an abusive parent, as well as an abused son or daughter ... you may be free of the spiritual, emotional and physical consequences. You do not need to feel oppressed by the unhealthy ways of others. Living surrendered to an unhealthy environment, by all means is being our own abuser.

What we do to others we do to ourselves. What we permit is our own fault. In an abusive relation both may become guilty. The bad weed is taken out by the roots, because abuse = abuse. On many occasions abusers were abused. It does not have to be like that, we can stop this bad action.

Nobody is perfect, but we can learn together to be better humans. Love is the answer and there is only one way to manifest love, found in 1 Corinthians 13. Read it over and over; write it over and over.Make it yours. Take one step at a time...you can get out of the routine that abusiveness enslaves.

The only way evil is defeated is by love. Love is a decision. We learn to love, for then we need to practice love. The Bible is the Word of God, our Creator and Savior, for us to live by. He wants you, me and all of us living in freedom and love, because he is the source of love.

If you do not believe in God, or the Bible, but you are a reader and living the hell of an abusive relation, your hope is to understand what love is about, and from all the written...what the Bible contains will not harm anyone. It nourishes our Spirit, saves our Soul, and gives us the key to free our Body.

Living by the Bible is living by love. Stay with these verses and live by them. Please let me know if you got harmed or your abusive relation got worse. I know you will write back saying how wonderful the miracle of love is.

• Luke 6:35 " But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back ..."
• Romans 12:9 "Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good."
• Ephesians 4:2 "Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love."

Sons and daughters honor your parents.

Parents stop being abusers.

Life is short, we do not know when will we stop living. Today they are children, tomorrow they are grown ups and gone.

Make your days worthy. Write a letter to your parents saying how you feel, being honest is not a crime (say it with love). If you are an abusive parent, write a letter saying how you feel. Look at each others eyes and open those arms to embrace your love in a warm hug.

Love is the answer.

Blessings to all!

© Maria Magdalena Ruiz O'Farrill