Love, Pray, Listen: Parenting Wayward Adult Children: Mary DeMuth

Okay, if there's a passage of Scripture that I am asked over and over and over to read at a wedding, everybody knows it's called the love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13. Here's something I've never done. I've never read that, taught that in regards to parenting.

Which would be really helpful, right? I mean, it applies to everything, but think about parenting and especially parenting maybe a prodigal or a wayward adult child. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Shelby Abbott and your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. You can find us at familylifetoday.com or on the Family Life app.

This is Family Life Today. We have Mary DeMuth back in the studio with us today. You said her name right.

I did say it right. Mary, welcome back to Family Life Today. So grateful to be here. Mary, I'm a little upset. They won't let me say your name because I guess I don't know how to say it, but I'm glad Ann introduced you, Mary, D-whatever.

D-whatever. Your book is Love, Pray, Listen, Parenting Your Wayward Adult Kids with Joy. And we've spent a few days talking with you about how do you do that. It's one of the things that brings real angst to us as parents. And to parent our maybe a wayward child with joy, that feels even harder. And Dave, as you said, we're bringing 1 Corinthians into this because Mary, you went through this scripture and really broke it down and how this applies to us as parents with adult kids, which is kind of amazing that you brought this scripture into this relationship with adult kids.

But I like that we're doing that. It's an important scripture and it's basically just unpacking what is love. You're answering the question, what is love demonstrated?

What does it look like? And so it made sense to me to say, okay, this is kind of a test. When you have a wayward adult kid, it's a test of your love because it's very easy to love those who love you, very easy to love people who are making the decisions that you approve of. It's hard to love someone who's maybe making the kind of decisions that will break their life. When your kid is two or three and running out into the street and you're able to grab them, you can prevent them from doing a life changing decision. But once they're out there in the world, the stakes are higher.

It's harder. It feels like they're still in the street and we can't. It feels like they're still toddlers. And it feels like we can't grab them. We can see where they're going. We can see the destruction it could cause.

And now as an adult parent, you cannot grab that child and bring them to what we think is safety. So it's really different. I'd love to hear your thoughts on, you've studied this. I'm going to read it.

You can pick any part of it that you want. I know your book takes each chapter as a part of this. But I remember because I was asked so many times to use this in weddings as a pastor. I remember, I better understand this.

So when I did a study of even the church, First Corinthians in Corinth, I was amazed that nobody talks about this. This is this beautiful statement on love. But Paul is sort of, the apostle Paul, when he wrote it, he's sort of exhorting them to say, you're acting like kids. You're into vision. Your love is not adult love. It's kid love. Here's what mature, godly adult love looks like, right? And then you read it that way. It's like, whoa, he's sort of slamming them a little bit like guys.

He's a little angry. And again, it's so beautiful that we read it with music under it. And it's not just for marriage.

No. It's for life. You talk about for parenting kids, but I'll read it and then you can make comments. Paul wrote this, love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. It's so convicting.

Especially when you think about this with our adult children. So Mary, teach us. Enlighten us. The Greek word. Well, by the way, what do you do with the Greek words in your book? Yeah. It's fascinating. I mean, I've studied them, but man, reading through it again, I'm like, every parent needs to understand these because you dive in and say, here's what Paul's really saying.

Yeah. I mean, just reading, I wish that I was fluent in Koine Greek, but it was very helpful to go back to the Greek to really expand the meaning. A couple of the things that stood out to me as you were reading at this time, the envy and boast was hard for me when I got to that part in the book, because I was like, what in the world does this mean for parents of adult kids? And so I talked to my husband about it and he goes, I think it has to do with when we constantly compare ourselves to other families and we either envy them because, well, look, these kids were like raised by wolves and they turned out okay.

I did everything right. And mine are like making all their choices. And so we envy seemingly perfect families, or we become so proud of the way that maybe our kids turned out okay. And we become like little Pharisee people really proud and boasting about our parenting skills. It's kind of like when you have one child who's easy and you're like, I'm the best parent ever. And then the next child comes and you can't boast about your parenting skills anymore and you just cry all the time. It's like that. Like you can't boast about your parenting because we're all on the same level playing field as the cross.

And we also don't have the ability to pull back the veil of every single family. And so that kind of freed me up. And I hope that it helps other parents say, maybe a part of my discontent is I'm comparing my family to this other family and they seem to be doing great.

Why me? It's hard. It's something you go back to the Lord about. But really, as I mentioned before, we're only responsible for our own walk with the Lord.

We cannot walk our child's walk with the Lord. So we just have to work on this. And it's interesting.

You know, we live in a culture different than the culture we grew up in where if you wanted to compare to people, you had to see them at church or in the neighborhood. You know, you get the Christmas card and you go, whoa, they're living this perfectly. I was just, for whatever reason, I was reading through a book we wrote on parenting called No Perfect Parents.

And we asked our three sons to write in it, thinking parents would rather read what our sons wrote than what some parent says. And one of the things Austin said, who's got four kids now, is he said, when you get the Christmas card and everything's perfect in their life, rip it up and throw it away. That's what he said in the book. I don't remember that he said that. Do not compare yourself to that family.

Not that there's anything wrong with that family. But he says, you're going to look at that and you're going to go, oh, we're missing it. And that's exactly what he said.

And it's actually what Paul's saying. Don't envy and boast. So there's the pride side, but there's also the envy side where we compare every day now on Facebook or Instagram or you name it. And we just feel less than. Do you think kids feel when we're comparing them? Maybe because we do it in like this secret. I remember picking up this Christmas card and I said, you guys, your seven-year-old read through the whole Bible this year, you know, and our boys are eating and I think they picked that up.

Like, what are we then? Did you ever compare your kids or compare yourself? No, we're sitting with a perfect mom here. I just need her. I need her to be real with me. I'm going to be real.

Yes, of course. I think all of us do that. And especially when you're an insecure parent, like I was of always trying to figure out how do I parent when I didn't have an example. I was constantly also just learning from other parents. So I was watching them because I learned better by watching them by even reading a book. And so I was constantly comparing my parenting to others.

But also, yes, like look at how those kids live. I remember one particular time when my kids were younger and someone told me about this book that I had to read and it was very, it was kind of a robotic way of parenting. I won't say the name, but I started doing it with my kids. And they looked at me like, what happened to our mother? What is wrong with you? And I wanted robot kids. It made more sense to me. Like if you have robot kids that always obey you on the first time, like how nice is that?

It didn't work out. And so we left the robot kid book behind and we just were ourselves. And I think that's part of parenting is you learn to try things on different sides.

Yeah. And you put this comparison, even if you don't know you're doing it, you put it on your kids and they feel the way I've ever, you know, years ago, and I don't want to say which son this was, but it's going to come out somehow. But I started to help coach high school football at the local school. And my kids were all three going to go through there. So I coached them when they were little and the head coach there asked me to coach there. So I thought, this is going to be great.

I'll be able to influence young men. And I did chapel for the team as well. But I'll be able to be on the field with my sons. And it was the summer and they're doing summer training. They had to run and run and run.

I remember this is my first day and I walk over and the kids have been running. And one of them, the kids is laying on the track. He quit. He's just laying. Everybody just finished like a 400 and he's laying there. And I remember walking up thinking, what is that loser kid doing?

He's that out of shape? You don't lay down. I mean, how bad is that? And I walk up, it's my son. I was like, no. And I remember saying, hey, get up. I was so embarrassed. I mean, any other kid would be like, dude, you know.

But my son, I remember driving home like, you will never. And it was all about me. You were embarrassed. He was just like, I was exhausted. I'm like, I don't care.

You don't lay down. I think I would have been nicer to another kid. I was not as nice to my own kid. And it was like, I am comparing.

And it's easy to do, especially if they're not walking the perfect little Christian life we expect them to walk. That's a big one. How about this one? Love is not irritable. And Mary, you break down this word.

Do you remember what that means in the Greek? Irritable. That's usually what it means. I think it's like testy and touchy and basically easily set off.

Yeah. We live in a culture that has deified irritation and has said that if we're going to be heard, we have to be mean. I just don't get that. I think that's not how Jesus would act. Not that he wasn't truthful at times, obviously. He did say pointed things.

So I'm not saying don't say pointed things. But I think we are kinder to strangers than we are to the people in our homes and to our grownup kids. And especially around, I think a lot of things happen, and this is where part of the book came from, was during the last election cycle, we saw a lot of parents and kids have conflict because there was this nastiness of vitriol going back on both sides, all political parties, back and forth to each other.

And I just feel like we need to tone down our language and understand that there are humans on the other side of the pixels. We have kids that have estranged themselves from their parents because of their parents' views on Facebook that have been very, very kind of nasty on Facebook. We have parents who have separated from their kids because of their kids doing the exact same thing. And it's not a worthy thing to divide over.

If we're going to talk about the gospel, the things that we divide over are the essentials. Everything else is peripheral, and we need to learn how to have kindness. I'm thinking about when our kids were little and these emotions would come out of me that I thought, where is this coming from? And then I would think, these kids are making me like this, like crazy or mad. And I remember one day I felt like God was whispering to me, and see those things that are arising in you?

Those are the things that I want to heal. And I'm wondering about that with our adult kids. If we see these emotions or even sin rising up within us, do you think God is whispering, oh, I want to heal that? Because Jesus wouldn't respond like that.

I've never thought of that. I've thought about it when our kids were little. But now, with adult kids, is Jesus just always healing us? He's like, oh, I see that.

I'm going to help you with that, Ann. Because we tend to think, we've got it all together now, we're adults, but could God be using our adult kids to help shape us spiritually? And I think that's where the humility comes in, this humbleness of even being willing to hear from our adult kids and asking open-ended questions and asking, how can I be more accommodating to you? Or what sets you off when we're in a conversation and be willing to hear it? But yes, paying attention to when you go off. When you're irritable.

Yes, when that happens, it is a sign that there's something broken inside of you. And it's usually around the idol of control. You don't have the control that you want. And a lot of us, and I'll raise my hand, a lot of us worship the idol of control. And when our kids leave our nest, we thought we had control. I mean, there were instances when we didn't, but we had this like modicum of control when they were under our roof. When they left, we realized it was an illusion of control. And now we know that there's no such thing as control. I cannot control another human being unless I'm an abuser.

That to me is you realize the importance of surrendering to the Lord and saying, I don't know the answer to this question. I don't know how to love my adult kid. I'm angry at their political views. I don't like what they view about sexuality. I am brokenhearted. And I see them going down this road that is making permanent decisions that is breaking my heart. But Lord, I surrender it to you.

Obviously I need to be healed, but I also need you to help me because I can't do this without you. Yeah, that's really good. I mean, that's beautiful. And I'm also here, my mind goes right here. And then 10 minutes later.

Meanwhile. Because you do, you have these, they're beautiful parenting moments like, I've got to let go. It's even, love does not seek its own way.

The selfishness in us, I want this, it's not happening. Okay, I've got to surrender. But then a half hour or an hour later, they'll post something, they'll say something, I'll see it, and you find yourself back there again. So is it just a continual surrender as a parent?

It has to be. And that's basically the Christian life is a continual surrender of, I can't. And I think a lot of us that grew up in the parenting culture that, in our era, we thought that a good parent was someone who had it all together, who did all the right rules and obeyed all the right things and implemented all the right programs. But I think that the best parent is a surrendered, broken parent. And so we just need to display that and say, I cannot do this. I think that's part of so much of the angst of parents of wayward or prodigal kids is this control of, I can't fix this.

I'm the parent, I should be able to. And to just say, I can't, you can help. That's my big prayer.

I can't, you can help. Really boring prayer, but it works. I was reading in Judges this morning and the story of Gideon. And I circle my Bible whenever it says, and they cried out to the Lord. And they cried out to the Lord. And every time it will say, and he heard them. And so as you're talking about talking to the Lord about this, he hears us. He hears those cries.

He hears the humility of saying, Lord, I don't know what to do. And as we were talking, I was thinking, we can be irritable, but there's another part of us that starts pulling way back from our kids when we feel like we just can't get along, if maybe we feel like they don't even like us anymore. And so we start to withdraw.

What do you think about that? Is that a bad tactic? You know, again, that's going back to the Holy Spirit being the director, because I think sometimes the Lord says, pull away for the sake of your sanity, pull away for the sake of healing. Sometimes he says, pursue them even when it hurts. Pursue them even if you are going to be hurt.

So it really depends. I don't think there's a one size fits all, but there have been times where my kids have had to pull apart from me and my husband, and there's been times where we've had to for a short period of time, and that's okay. Sometimes you can't see clearly when you're enmeshed in a situation and you have to kind of get that 30,000 foot view and go, oh yeah, I really was a jerk during that time, or I really do need to be healed, or I really was counting on my children to make me joyful. It's just pulling apart with always with the heart of Jesus of we all want to have a spirit of reconciliation and we always want to have that hope. But also understanding Romans 12, it talks about as far as it depends on you, be at peace with all people. I can control my apology, I can control what I do, but I can't make them apologize and I can't make them come back to me. So in those waiting spaces, you pray and you surrender.

That's wise. Yeah, I think where Paul starts, love is patient, is so hard. I mean, I'm sure it was hard in his day, but in our day, I mean, everything's so instant.

I've literally stood in front of the microwave and said, hurry up, a microwave, it's gonna be ready in 30 seconds. And I'm like, sort of like, so when you take that mentality we live in with our children, it's a long, long journey that we often just give up. And then you get to the end, I'd love to hear your thoughts because he says, love bears all things. Here it is, believes all things and hopes all things. Because it takes long and I'm not so patient, I stop believing and I stop hoping. What do you say to a parent that's gotten to that place? First, I hear you, I see you, I weep alongside you and I dignify the pain that you're in because it is very hard and I've been in those places before where I'm like giving up, it hurts to hope. But then I have to go back to the fact that Jesus can do the miraculous and I've seen him do it over and over. And I think what has helped me, and this metaphor came to me this week, I was in this kind of conflictual pain and the Lord said, what if you looked at your life as if it were a choose your own adventure movie? And instead of just being mired in right now, look to the future and see that it's going to be this wild adventure. And if you're having a hard time, look backward and see the faithfulness of God and recount the faithfulness of God that he has been to you in the past.

Remember that and let that be the framework that you go forward with. And that's what I've talked about before is we have to lament, we have to hurt in order to see the tiny ways that God is working both in our lives and in the lives of our adult kids who are going astray. I mean, I think for all of us, hope is so critical.

Because when you lose hope, I mean, you know, you said as a little girl, you had sort of lost hope and you were thinking I'm going to end my life. And when you lose hope as a parent, it almost feels almost as bad or worse because you feel more for your children than we even do our own ways. Maybe we could take just a second as we're talking about being gracious to our kids. Many times as parents, we are not gracious to ourselves. In fact, we're really hard on ourselves. So could you speak to that parent?

I'll just be speaking to myself. I think a lot of us have that where we're just so hard on ourselves because we think we should know better for whatever reason. And there may be a key there of learning to be compassionate toward yourself if you can learn to be and choose to be by faith and ask God to give you the strength to be gracious to yourself or the strength to see yourself as He sees you as a working progress, but beautiful. If we can do that, then we tend to be less judgmental of others because we've graced ourselves. But I'll say that as someone who struggles to do that. I'm not there yet.

I'm still struggling in that area. I think too, as we pray as parents to give it to Jesus, we've already talked about that many times, to release it, but to also not go ahead. Many times the enemy paints a scenario of horror for the future of our children. And I'll run that path, man, all day long.

Like, oh yeah, this could happen and this can happen. And so then I end up in fear, which then tends to make me more controlling. And Jesus is saying, just live today. It's in scripture.

Don't worry about tomorrow. And as a parent, that's really hard to do. And so to release it, to give it to Him, to stay in the moment, to ask Him to help take our thoughts captive so that we're not running along that line of despair for the future. I think it'd be so helpful just to pray for parents.

For Mary, like, would you just pray for parents that are just struggling right now? Jesus, we thank you for this moment in time. And we thank you for every parent out there who is, oh Lord, they're carrying a heavy burden. And I pray that they would release it at the foot of your cross. I pray you would take it up because you promised that when you give us a burden, it's light.

But we've been carrying the weight of our children's decisions and they're just too heavy. Lord, I pray that you would help us to lament. I pray you'd help us to grieve. I pray that you would help us to not lose hope, but to trust you. I pray that you would bring joy every single day, even if our kids make decisions that break our hearts. Lord, we lay our hearts at the foot of the cross. We lay ourselves.

We lay our control and that illusion of control there. I pray for the family and the parents who have been estranged from their kids. And I pray, Lord, even in the hearing of my voice that you would turn that around right now in Jesus' name. I pray that you would inaugurate more missions, more ministry in this generation of parents and you would set them free to spread your gospel. And Lord, let it begin with us.

Let it begin in our homes. Teach us how to love our adult kids with 1 Corinthians 13 in mind. Lord, we're just broken human beings who need you. Thank you for being broken for us. Thank you for loving us well. In Jesus' name, amen.

That was so good. I think of the parent listening who's like, could you just pray for me every day? And you do that in your book. I do. At the end of every chapter, there's a prayer. I do that in my podcast. I pray for people every day. Yes, and yeah, listen to your podcast. Yeah, I was thinking God's running to that parent.

Yeah. You know, you think sometimes, you know, God loves. Dennis Rainey said God loves the prayer of a helpless parent. And we're helpless and he runs to that prayer.

He's on it right now. I love that prayer that Mary just prayed for us. Learning to forgive ourselves and asking for forgiveness is so profoundly important. When we make a habit of confessing that we're completely hopeless without God, we'll approach parenting with the kind of humility that changes us, our kids, and the world, regardless of your kid's age.

I love that. I'm Shelby Abbott, and you've been listening to Dave and Anne Wilson with Mary DeMuth on Family Life Today. You know, Mary's written a book called Love, Pray, Listen, Parenting Your Wayward Adult Kids with Joy. That book answers kind of, you know, really important questions that I think many parents are asking in this life stage. Questions like, is it possible to hold on to my joy when parenting is so hard? If we're honest, I think all of us have asked that question. And other questions like, what do I do when my kids make choices that don't align with my values?

They're going ways that I don't want them to go. Well, Mary's book answers those questions and so many more. We think it's an important book, and it's going to be our gift to you when you partner with us financially. You can go online to familylifetoday.com, or you could give us a call with your donation at 800-358-6329. Again, that number is 800, F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. If you'd like to make a donation through the mail, feel free to drop us something at Family Life 100 Lakehart Drive, Orlando, Florida 32832. You know, here's a fact.

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