Finding healing even if it feels too late
“It’s too late.”
I’ve heard it from teenagers countless times. They hear the truth about staying sexually pure until marriage, and they might even agree it sounds nice, but they’ve already engaged in some sort of sexual activity, and they feel dirty, or . . . blemished.
“I’m already not a virgin, so it doesn’t matter now.”
Past mistakes can leave a trail of hurt. A teen pregnancy, the inherent shame of being caught using pornography . . . Do these past experiences have to leave scars?
Sometimes hurt is inflicted on our kids in the form of sexual violation or abuse. Now they are feeling pain and regret for something that isn’t even their fault. How can parents help their kids overcome this kind of hurt?
Keys for Parents
In this chapter we’ll look at three steps to helping our kids overcome a blotted past. But first, let me share two very important reminders about our approach.
Yeah, I’ve said it before in this book, and it’s worth repeating. When Mom or Dad overreacts, it only widens the chasm between parent and child. I know, because when I’ve lost my temper with my own kids, the wounding results are undeniable.
Mental note: Don’t be honest or vulnerable with Dad; he’ll flip out!
If our kids are already experiencing hurt or guilt, the last thing they need is to have to manage an emotionally unstable parent.
I have a friend who got pregnant as a teen. Her parents kicked her out of the house immediately and she had to fend for herself. She not only felt guilty for her mistake, she felt abandoned and alone.
I have another good friend who was abused by her brother when she was a child. Her mother went into a rage—demanding to know all the details, asking her where she was touched, dragging her to the doctor, and making a huge scene. Every time her mom brought it up, which was way too often, she would turn away from her daughter with a look of disgust. My friend was only eight at the time. She was left feeling dirty and ashamed.
Years later that friend of mine went to counseling. Her psychologist told her that her mother’s reaction was probably equally, if not more, harmful than the original abuse.
Our reactions matter.
When our kids experience hurt, self-inflicted or not, they need someone safe.
Are you that person?
I wonder that myself. Will my daughter come to me with her pain and tough questions?
If you discover your kid’s imperfect past, don’t blow a gasket. Take time if you need it and figure out how you can transform your overreaction into interaction. Don’t let your emotions inhibit the opportunity to walk through this experience with your child, providing love, grace, and healing.
Chances are you have some blotches on your record too. Approach your kids with the compassion of a fellow sinner. Jesus has offered us a fresh start.
And that leads me to my second reminder.
As parents, we can help our kids see the freedom from a blotted past that Jesus provides.
Past imperfections shouldn’t impede fresh futures . . . especially when Jesus offers us a new beginning. Think about that. A new beginning. I don’t know many teenagers who wouldn’t want a “do-over.”
Do your teenagers know they can have a do-over?
If you read the Gospels, you’ll notice that imperfect people seemed especially attracted to Jesus. In fact, the more messed up they were, the more they wanted to meet this guy, who offered repentance and a fresh start.
Sadly, Christians don’t always reflect Jesus. Christians can be pretty condemning at times. If they’d open their Bibles and read about Jesus, they’d discover he didn’t come to condemn. Point of fact, the verse immediately after the most popular verse in the Bible says just that: “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:17 NIV).
Jesus didn’t focus on blemished pasts; he focused on a fresh future. That means even if our kids have already been sexually active, frequented porn sites, or become slaves to masturbation . . . it’s not too late.
Parents can help their kids find healing when it feels too late.
Not My Kid
Here’s where most parents might be tempted to say, “Well, luckily my kid hasn’t done any of that.”
It would be rather optimistic of me to assume every parent who reads this book is going to sit down and have conversations with their eight-, ten-, or twelve-year-old, just in time to help them make good decisions about sex before they’ve gone down a different path.
But what if your kids are older? We don’t want to assume the worst, but what if they’ve already experimented sexually like so many teens do? Looking back at the numbers shared earlier in this book, one-third of U.S. high school freshmen and almost two-thirds of high school seniors have already had sexual intercourse.1 And the previous two chapters revealed an overwhelming majority of kids who have viewed pornography or struggle with masturbation. Statistically, many of our teenagers have already made some of these decisions.
Sadly, some of our kids didn’t even make decisions, but had decisions made for them. Later in this chapter we’ll see that anywhere from one in five to a shocking one in three youth have been sexually abused or victimized. How can we help them overcome that kind of pain?
Our kids might feel that some of these past experiences will taint them for life.
How can we help them survive the past and look forward to a bright future?
Let’s first look at what we can do to help our kids who have already been sexually active, frequented porn sites, or struggle with masturbation. Then let’s look at what we can do if our kids have been sexually abused or victimized.
Helping Kids Overcome a Blotted Past
If our teenagers have already struggled with lust or masturbation or engaged in sexual activity, they aren’t dirty or blemished. They’re human. They’re sinners like the rest of us, and we all desperately need Jesus. I know I do.
Jesus has offered us a fresh start. As parents, we can help our kids see the freedom Jesus provides from a blotted past.
Here are three steps that can help our kids overcome past imperfections and look forward to a bright future.
1. Accept Forgiveness for the Past
Guilt is a cumbersome burden. Some choose to drag it around for life. This is even more common with sexual mistakes. Promiscuous activity has always been hushed in the church. So if our kids mess up in this area, why would they want to bring it to light? The natural tendency is to bury it and hope it goes away.
Sadly, burying sin never works. It tends to rot and grow into something bigger. That’s probably why the Bible encourages us to confess our sins to one another (James 5:16). Not as some religious ritual that we have to do . . . but because we want freedom from the bondage that sin brings.
We can help our kids find freedom from the chains of guilt by pointing them to the fresh start Jesus provides. The more we spend time reading the Bible, the more we’ll see examples of this.
Look at the story of Jonah and Nineveh. An entire city was evil and corrupt, but God chose to have compassion on them. Funny, God’s compassion was so great it made Jonah mad. Jonah was actually hoping God would destroy the city.
This is a good life lesson for our kids. Sometimes God’s people aren’t as forgiving as God is. God is willing to forget our sins and free us from our blotted past.
The New Testament provides countless examples of this as well: the story of the woman at the well in John chapter 4, the story of Zachaeus in Luke chapter 19 . . . Jesus didn’t hold their pasts against them. Instead, he offered them forgiveness and a bright future.
One of the best examples of this is in John chapter 8, where the Pharisees bring a woman caught in the act of adultery to Jesus, demanding he tell them what to do with her.
This had to be mortifying for the woman. Sure, she had messed up, but these religious snobs were using her to try to trap Jesus. Jesus was in a Catch-22. If he said, “Stone her,” then the Pharisees would go to the Romans and get Jesus busted for carrying out capital punishment without permission. On the other hand, if he said, “Let her go,” they would blame him for not following the Old Testament civil law punishing adulterers.
In the midst of this trap, Jesus shows compassion for the woman.
They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger. They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!” Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust.
When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?”
“No, Lord,” she said.
And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.”
John 8:6–11
This is one of those Bible passages where everyone tries to speculate about something not in the text. We don’t know what Jesus was writing in the ground.
Guess what?
It doesn’t matter.
Here’s what matters: When this woman is dragged in front of the crowd either naked or wrapped in a sheet . . . all eyes are on her. This woman has probably never felt the fear and shame that she is feeling at this moment.
So what does Jesus do?
He starts doodling in the sand.
Where is everyone’s attention now?
Jesus takes the attention off of her and onto his doodling. Better yet, he repels her accusers. Jesus brings up the sin of each of these hypocrites and basically tells them, “Sure, if you guys have never sinned, then go ahead and start throwing rocks!”
They all go away, defeated in this particular battle of wits. Why? Because none of them can deny that they are sinners.
That’s a good lesson for us, as parents, to remember if our kids make mistakes like these. We’re all sinners. We all make mistakes. And Jesus offers us a fresh start if we’re willing to accept his forgiveness.
First John 1:8–9 spells it out:
If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.
Jesus offers us a fresh start. He is willing to cleanse us from our past mistakes.
The more we share the stories of Jesus with our kids, the more they’ll see that he doesn’t care about the mistakes of our past, he cares about our future.
Jesus’ words are powerful in the ending to that story above. He asks the woman if anyone stuck around to condemn her. There’s that word condemn again. It seems like church people often think we are supposed to condemn sinners, but they will never find Scripture to back it up. Jesus didn’t come to condemn, and he didn’t let it happen to this adulterer. No one stuck around to condemn her because they all knew they were imperfect just like her.
That’s why he said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.”
There’s that same theme again: I don’t condemn you for your past, but I care about your future.
Which leads us to the second step we can teach our kids.
2. Don’t Let Past Missteps Justify Future Mistakes
God’s grace isn’t a license to sin even more.
Sometimes when we hear about how compassionate and forgiving God is, we use that as an excuse to sin even more. After all, I can just ask for forgiveness later.
This can hurt us two ways.
First and foremost, it hurts our relationship with God. The foundation of our relationship with God is based on our trust in him. How much are we trusting in him if we aren’t willing to give everything to him?
Paul tackles this faulty logic in Romans chapter 6. He asks:
Well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it?
Romans 6:1–2
Paul goes on to urge us to put our complete trust in God, warning, “Do not let sin control the way you live; do not give in to sinful desires” (v. 12).
Second, using past missteps as an excuse to justify future mistakes can also bring some pretty severe consequences. God is willing to forgive us, but that doesn’t necessarily free us from natural consequences.
If your son gets his girlfriend pregnant, God’s forgiveness doesn’t free him from the ramifications of that decision.
If your daughter gets chlamydia and never realizes she has it (which happens frequently because the disease is asymptomatic), the consequences are often sterility.
Our choices have consequences. God’s grace isn’t a “get out of jail free” card for natural consequences.
My friend “Donna” learned that the hard way.
Donna was sexually active all through high school. She loved partying and having sex with anyone she wanted, and she got away with it for a while. But eventually her life of partying left her homeless and alone.
One day a couple from a local church met her on the street and offered her food to eat and eventually a place to stay. Donna thought, Sure, I’ll take advantage of these stupid people and rip them off when they sleep. But each night when Donna went to bed she told herself, “I’ll rip them off tomorrow.” After all, the people were nice, the bed was comfortable, and she hadn’t had good food like this in a long time.
As months passed, she became friends with the woman who had taken her in. Eventually Donna gave her life to Jesus, and he began to transform her.
One night Donna was in her old neighborhood and she encountered some friends she used to party with. They invited her to a party and Donna wondered what one party could hurt.
That night Donna made a decision that had some painful ramifications.
That night Donna got HIV.
God has forgiven Donna for every one of her mistakes, but Donna is still carrying the consequences in her numbered years.
Just because God offers us a clean slate, it doesn’t give us license to do whatever we want.
That’s probably why we should . . .
The best thing we can do with past mistakes is learn from them.
When your kids mess up, help them make a plan to avoid the same mistake in the future. Use the same method we’ve discussed repeatedly in this book—engage in dialogue, not monologue.
When your kids mess up, don’t automatically shift into lecture mode. I’ve made this mistake countless times with my kids. Kids don’t need our lecturing. They need our listening.
So turn “You should . . .” into “What do you think you should you do?”
If your son got alone with a girl and found that “it was impossible to stop,” don’t lecture him. Instead, ask him, “What do you think you could do to avoid the situation in the future?”
This doesn’t mean you don’t share truth. Share, then ask questions. Tell him, “Most bad choices began five choices ago.” Then ask him:
Share with him what the Bible says about fleeing. Ask him questions about what fleeing looks like in his world.
Past mistakes can be costly, but they can also be a great teaching tool, motivating us to make better choices for the future.
I also like to encourage kids to find someone they can talk with about sexual temptation. This creates accountability. Ask your child, “Who is someone you can call when you’re feeling tempted? Who is someone who is putting God first in their own life who would encourage you to do the same?”
The Bible constantly encourages us to enlist others in this journey:
Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble.
Ecclesiastes 4:9–10
Encourage your kids not to go on this journey alone.
Overcoming Sexual Abuse or Victimization
What if our kids have been sexually abused or victimized? What kind of help can we offer them?
First, realize they aren’t alone.
Studies by David Finkelhor, Director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center, reveal:
According to a 2003 National Institute of Justice report, three out of four adolescents who have been sexually assaulted were victimized by someone they knew well.3
Young people carrying the burden of sexual abuse often feel dirty or used. Sadly, they might even feel it is their own fault. In most cases, professional help is recommended. But as parents, we too should be an encouragement to them about a bright future.
If your child has experienced sexual abuse, I recommend three steps.
Report It
Sometimes people avoid reporting abuse because of the pain and embarrassment, but this often leaves a predator free to do more harm. Most sexual predators act repeatedly. Your reporting could prevent countless future victims from the abuse or victimization your own child has endured. If you discover abuse or victimization, report it.
This isn’t something kids should be embarrassed about. Counselors can provide the tools individuals need to overcome past hurt. They can also provide parents some guidance on how to help kids heal.
Focus on the Future
Abuse victims often blame themselves and dwell on the past. As parents, we can not only assure them, “It’s not your fault,” but we can also help them look forward to a bright future. Introduce them to God’s grace in every situation and show biblical examples of Jesus helping people overcome all kinds of pasts (like the previous examples in this chapter).
This kind of hurt is never easy. There is no magic Band-Aid that makes it all better after one application. This takes time, it takes care, and often takes professional help.
But Jesus offers a fresh start for everyone.
Everyone.
Recalculating
Have you ever veered off the path while on a road trip?
Ever take a wrong turn?
There is one word a GPS uses that we all know too well: “Recalculating.”
I might be driving to Los Angeles, but when I turn off the freeway to grab a Wendy’s Frosty, a soft female voice calmly says, “Recalculating.”
If road construction sends you miles off course and you have no idea where you are, the word recalculating actually brings hope. It’s a voice that says, “I haven’t given up. Sure, we’ve veered from our intended course, but I’m still going to get you there. Let’s start again from this new location.”
It would be pretty discouraging if our GPS said, “Pull over and shut off the ignition; you have passed the point of no return. This is where you are going to die.”
My GPS has never done that. Instead . . . “Recalculating.”
In other words, “Don’t give up. We’ll get there.”
We can be that calm voice in our child’s ear: “It’s not too late. Jesus has offered us a fresh start.”
Parents can help their kids find healing when it feels too late.
Jesus doesn’t care about our past, he cares about our future. Walk with your kids on this journey and experience the freedom God provides.