When My Family Is Toxic

If you came from a dysfunctional family of origin and now you're getting married and you don't want those dysfunctions to follow you into your new marriage or new family, what do you do? Gary Thomas says what you don't do is try to go back at the beginning of your new marriage and fix what was broken in the family you grew up in. I see this half the time where suddenly they have this great marriage. They're starting a new family.

Okay, now it's time for me to go fix my childhood home. And I'm like that is wasting your time. You can't have a healthy relationship with an unhealthy person and you need to walk away from what's destroying you. So you're building up a strong marriage. You have a chance to build a new family, a new relationship, a new marriage takes a lot of time. And so don't go back and try to parent your parents.

And thank God that he's brought you to a new place where you can be involved in a healthy relationship. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are David and Wilson.

I'm Bob Lapine. You can find us online at familylifetoday.com. There may be a time in the future when you need to address relationship issues from your family of origin, but at the start of a new marriage, it's time to focus on leaving and cleaving. We're going to talk more about that today with Gary Thomas as we talk about toxic relationships. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. You know, it occurs to me that the reason that we have a radio program is because relationships are hard. I mean, let's just acknowledge if relationships were easy, no one would be tuning in and listening to Family Life Today.

They wouldn't need any help. But relationships are hard because anytime you're in a relationship, it's two sinful people and our sinful tendencies manifest themselves and it makes what we long for, which is love, it causes it to go sideways because of our sin. Sometimes that gets extreme and that's what we're talking about this week as we talk about toxic relationships. And we've got Gary Thomas joining us again this week. Gary, welcome back.

Thank you. Gary is an author, a speaker. He is on the pastoral staff at Second Baptist Church in Houston. He's the writer in residence there. He's the author of books that really have been widely influential in the church.

The book Sacred Marriage, Sacred Parenting, Sacred Influence, and now this book, When to Walk Away. Really a book. I started this week by saying, yeah, we're going to have Gary on whatever book he writes. But this is the least Gary Thomas book you've written, don't you think? It is. I would have never believed it and it was difficult for me to put it down. There was some truths in here that honestly are painful, but I think necessary. Yeah, and I got to tell you, when I picked it up, I thought the same thing.

I thought, this is Gary Thomas? And then I started reading and I couldn't put it down. You are hitting on something so important. It was a journey to go through.

It was just, it was really very, very good. And it's one thing if we've got a friend who we just look at and go, this relationship is draining me and I need to put some boundaries around it and I need to protect that. But when those relationships are blood, when we're talking about our parents, or when we're talking about siblings, or when we're talking about children. Yeah. Then it gets real.

Now all of a sudden, what do we do with that? And I know as you got into these chapters in the later part of your book, you were walking into a minefield. You knew you were walking into a minefield, didn't you?

I certainly did. Well, Gary, one of the chapters is about toxic parents and one of the Ten Commandments is to honor your father and mother. And then you start out saying, how do we honor our toxic parents?

That is really difficult because God's calling us to honor them. But what if they are toxic? What does a toxic parent look like? Give us some examples. If we go back to what we said a couple days ago, if they're overly controlling, they're certainly acting in a toxic way. And we've talked yesterday about the difference between acting in a toxic way and actually being toxic.

So you're trying to figure that out. If they have a murderous spirit where they're murdering your plans, they're murdering your joy, they're murdering your sense of security or murdering your independence, frankly. Or if they love to hate, if they enjoy tearing you down, if they enjoy cutting your feet out from under you, if they enjoy destroying your relationships, that's a situation where you realize this relationship isn't healthy for me. And I got to tell you, I've talked so often with couples where I just, one of my favorite things, I love doing premarital counseling, when I see this woman who came out of a really dysfunctional home and she chooses a great guy. Because you know, sometimes when you come out of a dysfunctional home, you marry a guy who's sort of like your dad. But Jesus has redeemed them. He's restored them. He's renewed them and they have this great marriage. And then I see this half the time where suddenly they have this great marriage. They're starting a new family.

Okay, now it's time for me to go fix my childhood home. And I'm like, that is wasting your time. You can't have a healthy relationship with an unhealthy person and you need to walk away from what's destroying you. So you're building up a strong marriage. You have a chance to build a new family, a new relationship, a new marriage takes a lot of time. Lisa and I, the first year of our marriage was the most difficult year of marriage. It sounds like from vertical marriage, that was your most difficult year. And so don't go back and try to parent your parents. And thank God that he's brought you to a new place where you can be involved in a healthy relationship.

But so you just cut yourself off from your dysfunctional family and your parents who may exhibit toxic behavior? Let me give two examples. There's one where a woman had an older sister who had made some really bad choices in life, was a single mom, had a baby. And the younger sister had done so much right. She'd gone to an Ivy League school. She was starting a business. She was following the Lord.

It was exciting. The doors that God opened up for her, it's like she was a female Joseph. Everything she did was being blessed.

People were so excited. Well, because she was now in the same city as her older sister, she would get these emergency babysitting calls. You've got to watch your niece. And because she owned the business, she was sort of able to do that. But she resented it and it was getting in the way of starting this off because it takes a lot of energy. And thankfully, God brought her a great mentor who just said to her, look, neither your mom nor your sister know what it takes to succeed at this level.

You are actually undercutting your ability to bless so many people with this new effort you have by doing these emergency babysitting calls. And so she felt guilty when she looked at it through the lens of relationship, because the older sister would say, well, you're Christian, aren't Christians supposed to help those in need? And her mom would say, you've got to help her. She doesn't have the advantages that you have had. Of course, the mentor could tell her you both grew up in the same home. She made some choices.

This isn't about advantages. But when she looked at her family dynamics through the sense of mission, God has called me to do an important work in this world. I need to invest in reliable people, the people in her work, and that I'm actually hurting more people by doing this really child care that isn't appropriate at this time. Now she had a lens to say it was selfish for her to say yes to her sister and her mom. In that situation, I believe that her mom was acting in a toxic manner, but her mom wasn't toxic. She didn't cut off the relationship there. Now, they weren't happy with her, but they never will be. But she's maintained that relationship.

Toxic where you need to walk away would be another couple where the husband was married to a solid Christian woman. But his mom was either passive aggressive or not so passive aggressive and would just punish his wife. She couldn't do anything right. She wasn't parenting right. She didn't cook right. She didn't love her husband well enough.

It just drained her. And she just said to him early in December, honey, I just can't even bear the thought of spending Christmas with your mom this year. She goes, it takes me months to complain. You know, it's been a difficult fall. It had an issue with one of their kids.

She goes, I just don't know if I can do it. And this guy, he knew that his mom preached the gospel of family above all else and not being there for Christmas would be an act of war. There would be a backlash. But he did the right thing. He realized for that holiday, they needed to walk away. His wife needed to know, honey, it's legitimate. It's not like she was being hypersensitive.

He knew this was going on. It wasn't his wife being too sensitive. It was his mom being toxic toward his wife. Here's what I say to couples in this situation, because he said, Gary, how can I do this? I'm supposed to honor my mother and father.

I said, you honor your mom by acting as if she's healthy. If my son called me and said, dad, for the sake of my marriage, we just can't spend Christmas with you. I'd be devastated, but I hope I would say, son, I'm proud of you. You're a husband first, you're putting your wife first, you're doing what you're supposed to do. You're being a good husband. Good for you.

We'll miss you, but I'm proud of you. That's what I think a healthy parent would say. The fact that she didn't respond that way in any remote way, I think proves that she was acting in a toxic way. And so for that holiday, they had to walk away. I tell younger couples, I speak with the sentimentality of an empty nester. It's shocking how few Christmases you have when the kids are young. And then when they get older and they start to go away or they're on trips or then they're bringing in boyfriends or girlfriends or now spouses or whatnot, it's very few. To sacrifice the wonder of a holiday with kids in a healthy situation to appease a toxic parent, I think is a poor life choice.

And it's not your fault you're walking away from toxicity, not out of meanness, not out of disrespect, but out of wanting to give your kids a healthy and even happy childhood. And I can't imagine, I mean, Gary, I know NFL players I worked with for 33 seasons who could not do what you're saying right there in terms of there's no way I can call my mom and say, I'm not coming to Christmas. It isn't going to happen. I just can't do that. You know, I'm just going to endure. And I know counselors who would say to that person, I'll just fake it, just go there for a couple of days, fake it to make it and move on.

But you're saying you got to make a hard choice. I think we need to protect our family members from evil. When our kids were growing up, we talked a lot about Jesus, and I'm thankful for that.

I wish we'd talked more about evil and how to deal with evil and evil people that might, you can overdo it. You should emphasize Jesus 10 times, but to not mention evil at all is to leave people ill-equipped. Jesus said many times, watch out, be on your guard. I mean, he told his disciples, I'm the way, the truth, and the life.

These are liars, murderers, and thieves. And so we need to, I think, model and speak the reality of evil in a fallen world. We speak at the Weekend to Remember Marriage Getaways about God's plan for marriage. What's step one in God's plan for marriage?

For this cause, you will leave father and mother and you will form a new pride. A new priority relationship. And so when another person is not letting you leave and cleave, they're attacking your marriage relationship.

They're doing harm to what God has said, this needs to be the new priority relationship. And that's where husbands and wives need to say, and I'll just say moms and dads need to say, that ought to be the priority. As you said, the healthy parent ought to say, you're making your marriage a priority.

Good for you. And if you can't say that as a parent, you're the problem. Yeah. And yet to come and say, hey, I just heard this radio broadcast and I've discovered after listening to it that your mother is evil and we're not going to go to Christmas this year. Help us to know, like, how do we say that if we feel that about our spouse's parents? That's kind of tricky.

Well, here's the thing. I think you can recognize whether your spouse is up for it and it's a good thing and you're recognizing for this Christmas. We're united in heart and mind. We both feel like we're in a good place where we believe God is calling us to this as a mission. But it's sort of like if you are compromised, if your immune system is compromised, you don't go walk into a room of sick people. It is an art where you're figuring out, OK, are my spouses together? Do I need to protect my spouse?

Is this something we can do as an outreach? But then you're also bringing in your kids, another circumstances where a guy, he had an abusive dad and an abusive mom. She was verbally abusive. His dad was physically abusive and he became a Christian and they ridiculed him. Yeah, we'll see what happens when you're in high school.

We'll see what happens when you're in college. And he admits almost out of spite he was not going to backslide because he didn't want his parents to be right. But God used it. Then they had kids and his parents realized what they had missed and they thought they would get a do over with their grandkids. Now, his dad was still drinking too much. His mom was still talking the same way, in the same caustic way. And so the question came, when are the grandkids going to spend the weekend with us? And he said, they're not.

They will not be at your house without it. And they pulled out the card that toxic people use against Christians. You haven't forgiven us. The Bible says you're supposed to forgive.

You haven't forgiven us, have you? Otherwise, you'd let us watch the kids. And it always amazes me how toxic people are so aware of a couple of verses. They didn't care if he was acting like a Christian. They were trying to use scripture to control him.

We want the kids there. And he knew it wasn't safe. He knew that he couldn't guarantee they wouldn't be exposed to something harmful or treated in a harmful way. It wasn't disrespectful to his parents.

And he just said, no, they're not spending that. And you know what, if you go behind our back and you try to manipulate the kids of spending time with you, we won't even be here with them. So you're going to respect our authority. And I think in some ways, that's the most loving thing to do to a toxic person, because when you call them out on their toxicity, you may be the first person that says, there is a price for the way that you've become. I'm not going to be manipulated. And Jesus did that.

Jesus was so loving to the repentant, but he didn't play games with the non-repentant. I can imagine somebody standing up to a parent and saying, we're going to put some boundaries here. I'm turning the table now and thinking, what about the parent who says, we're having everybody home for Christmas, but the one kid, the one child in our family who has been manifesting toxic behavior, doesn't get to come and join the family for Christmas? It now all of a sudden feels really hard as a parent to say, I'm going to put boundaries around a child who is toxic in the rest of it, because as parents, we're supposed to be the ones who can fix that and make that all better.

And I think it's even harder, Bob, because generally there's one parent that will refuse to participate in saying, no, we are having them. And so that can become a conflict as well. You know, Jack Deere.

Yeah. He mentioned this in his life where he had a son who, now deceased, was into drugs, but he was toxic beyond his addiction. It wasn't just addiction and he'd given him chance after chance. Finally, this last chance he brought him back, he was acting in such a toxic way that Jack, they were on a trip, the younger daughter hit herself in the bathroom and locked the door and he realized, OK, here's the thing.

You are in rehab today or you're out on the street and everything's done. And the words he said are so severe for a parent, but they're necessary words. They're words of love.

He said, I can't save you from yourself, but I can protect others from you. And pretty much that's what you have forced me to do. I can't even imagine having to say that to a kid. But it's what you have to say.

It's the most loving thing you can say, because ultimately you're confronting them as Jesus did. You are destroying yourself. This is not an acceptable way to behave. I'm not going to cooperate with it.

I'm not going to enable it. I'm saying this stops. And in the end, we're doing what Jesus did. Take up your cross and follow me. There was a stunning example to me one time where I remember when Jesus sent the pigs off a cliff. The pig farmers and Jesus cast the demon out of a man, sends him into the pigs.

They run off the cliff. What would any of us pay for a weekend ticket to hear Jesus in concert? We could see him.

We could hear him. We watch real miracles, not fake miracles, right? For those of us that love Jesus, we're thinking a weekend with Jesus. Yeah.

Empty the 401K, sell my out, whatever it is. These people had Jesus in the flesh. And what did they say to him?

Please leave. The very next verse, Matthew 9-1, Jesus got into a boat and sailed away. So he didn't walk away. He sailed away. But he left.

He didn't say, oh, come on. You know, and that's where I think we have to be as parents. I think it's where we have to be as children and sometimes as spouses and friends and workers in the kingdom that times people will say, please leave. We're not controlling in return. We say, OK. Ann brought up the point that there's often division between a husband and wife in this situation. There's often one spouse who is just so completely brokenhearted at the thought that they are doing anything to exclude a toxic child from something. Well, I've heard them say if we do not include this child, they may take their life. And do we want that on our conscience?

You know, that can be such a controlling thing. I was with a pastor one time and we were in the middle of a conversation. He got a phone call from a woman. He said, we got to go. She's threatening suicide. And we got in the car and on the way over, I said, has this happened before?

He said, oh, it's happened four or five times. And I thought this woman's figured out how to get you to do everything. Yeah. And we're so afraid that somebody might actually carry through on that. And then the weight on our conscience, the guilt of our conscience. This requires wisdom. This requires prayer. But if somebody is using suicide as a manipulative tool, we want to get help and protection for them. But I don't think we can be held hostage.

Somebody's going to figure out, oh, I got I got the ace in the in the deck. All I have to do is say suicide and I get what I want. There's some great centers where I think you can say, look, this center deals with depression and anxiety. We will pay for you to go there. We want you to get the help you need. But what the study of when to walk away has done for me, because I see controlling as a toxic behavior, I'm so careful of becoming controlling myself because it's not the way that Jesus operates in scripture when he was willing to walk away.

It's not the way that God operates in the Old or or the New Testament, God the Father. And so you present the truth and you present the opportunity. We cannot control the outcome.

And so I think you you make that offer, as Bob said. But when you realize they've made the same threat four or five times at that point, I had to get over this false messianic complex that I am the one who can help your problems. People walked away from Jesus by the millions more they're going to walk away from me. And so you offer yourself as an assistance, but realize we can't control anyone else.

Let's come back to what's at the heart of your thesis. Why do we make the choice to walk away? The reason I make the choice to walk away is because my life is set up on seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and finding reliable people who I can invest in.

It's Matthew 633, 2 Timothy 2, 2. It's to have the positive life of offense. It's not because I'm worried about being drained or being disturbed. I live to be drained and disturbed in kingdom work. What I don't want to do is have unfruitful work.

I don't want to try to plant flowers on stone. I want to go to the plowed fields that God has set up. And so the four words that have guided me so often in ministry, no conviction, no counsel. If I don't think there's spiritual conviction there, if I don't think the heart is prepared, I'm not wasting my time. That's pearls before swine, right?

That is. But it's that focus that I believe this is urgent work. It's a good work.

Bringing the kingdom of Jesus Christ, his light, his love, his lordship, his authority, his influence is so important. People will oppose it. People will hate it.

People will resist it. My job is to have that extra sensitive X-ray radar to find those that are reliable, that will receive it and to pour generously into them so that the kingdom work will go on from generation to generation until Christ returns. I actually read this line in your book out loud to my wife. I mean, it's just what you just said, but he said it so well.

You said, if you are in Christ, you aren't just saved. You're enlisted. You have been called to an important work and there's no time to lose.

And it just it struck me again. We forget that it isn't just this little I'm a follower. I'm enlisted. I signed up. I got a job to do.

I can't waste a minute and I'm not going to allow somebody to get me off course. It just inspired me as I read that. And I'm like, man, this makes sense.

There are times you have to walk away to do the greater good. When I was a much younger dad and husband, I worked with a toxic guy. And what I regret most about that season, I would come home and I would be thinking about weird stuff, trying to make sense of weird stuff, trying to defend myself against weird stuff. And I look at how young my kids were.

And I would go back to me as a father and a husband. Now, Gary, leave it at the office, walk away mentally, find out about your kid's day, love on your kids, share with your kids, find out what your wife is thinking. You can't fix a toxic person. You shouldn't fret over a toxic person. Invest in the healthy relationships, invest in the God ordained relationships. And when a relationship is distracting you from what God has called you to do, you called you to do, learn when to walk away. This is where you need wisdom. You need godly counsel. You need prayer. These are not decisions that you make casually and you don't make them based on self-interest.

You make them based on kingdom interest. And Gary, that's what's at the heart of your book. I'm grateful you wrote a non Gary Thomas book like this and gave us a lot to think about and a lot to pray about and a lot to help guide our relationships and to promote healthy relationships and ask ourselves, are there ways I'm being toxic or I'm draining other people?

I think that's a good diagnostic question for any of us. Or being toxic to ourselves, which is how you end the book, which is huge. I was glad that you ended like that because I'm finding after 35, 40 years of ministry, I'm finding this one more often than not.

Okay, we're going to just have to have people buy the book to find out about what it means to be toxic to yourself. Gary, thanks for being on Family Life Today. Thank you so much. This place is a home away from home. I'm so grateful for the ministry of Family Life Today. Well, we're grateful for you and grateful for the courage it took to write this book. In fact, we want to make the book available this week for Family Life Today listeners, any of our listeners who would like to get a copy of your book, When to Walk Away. It's available when you make a donation to support the ongoing work of Family Life Today. Your donations are the lifeblood of this ministry. We could not do what we're doing through this daily radio program, through our resources, our events, everything we've got available on our website at familylifetoday.com.

All of that happens because listeners like you make it happen when you donate. So if Family Life Today has been an encouragement to you, if it has been used by God in your life, and you'd like to help make it available for other couples, other individuals who need the practical biblical help and hope that we are providing each day, you can do that as you make a donation today and when you request your copy of Gary's book, When to Walk Away. You can donate online. Our website is familylifetoday.com, or you can call 1-800-FL-TODAY to donate. Again, the website familylifetoday.com. Be sure to request your copy of Gary's book when you donate, or call 1-800-358-6329.

That's 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word today. Just say, I'd like to make a donation to support Family Life Today, and I'd like a copy of Gary Thomas' book, When to Walk Away. And thanks in advance for your support. We really do appreciate it. Now, tomorrow, we want to talk about just how vital, how important it is for us to be people who are grateful, how important gratitude, thankfulness is in our lives, and how critical it is that we teach our kids to be grateful, thankful, boys and girls. Sam Crabtree is going to join us tomorrow to help us think through that, and I hope you can be here with us as well. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch. We got some extra help from Bruce Goff today, along with our entire crew, our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lupeen. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas. A crew ministry. Help for today, hope for tomorrow.