Christian Living

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Larry Lilly's Letter Friday April 7, 2006

I talked with yet another man who is making a bigger mess of his life and he, as do many blamed his mother. These days mother seems to get as much blame as did the devil in Flip Wilson's heyday. Supposedly the lack of motherly nurture is the cause of drunkenness, laziness, adultery, homosexuality and the war in Iraq, to say nothing of the national debt. Severe debt is caused by men and women who did not receive proper mothering during their early formative years. I understand from noted psychiatrist, Dr. Ima Babbler, that this lack can be traced to the life of a person anywhere from the womb to around fifty. People who are the recipients of inadequate matriarchal nurturing seem to fair much better than those who suffer this prior to the mid-century mark.

When I labored in the glorious mountains it was observable that the very poor, of which there were many did not seem to suffer from this malady. They endured grinding poverty, the snub of those in town who had a little more and sang a few hymns, tried to remember some scripture they had heard, many of them could not read or write. Many of the scriptures they remembered were not in the Bible, but perhaps they should have been. I think many of the pseudo verses consisted of the gist of the actual verse.

One oft repeated gem "Every tub shall sit on its own bottom" is weighted with pure truth, as it meant that you are responsible for your actions, and you must pay the consequences of your choices. Sure seems like condensed truth to me. And no beating around the bush either.

I often kid about my mother loving my little sister more than she loved me. For many years it was not a joke to me. I clung to this thought as my excuse for outrageous behavior. As I grew older I realized that it was not my little sister who was the problem, but my mother and so I had a much bigger, more valid reason for not being normal. And then as I aged more, I left off of blaming mom and realized that I in fact had a true biblical reason and person to blame for all of my shortcomings. I entered into the realm of my great grand father, at least a thousand removed, and blamed my wife.

To be sure when a man goes from placing blame on his little sister, to his mother and then to his wife, he is making progress. Now if I can find a shrink who will help me to find the correct words to place the blame for all of my failures on the system, I will have reached the pinnacle of American maturity.

The truth be known, we cannot and should not try to place blame, but rather own up to our own faults and failures, accept the Lord's forgiveness and ask for His help along the way.

In "The Diary Of A Young Girl" Anne Frank wrote:

"Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands."

Larry Lilly Copyright © 2006 Use with credit.

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