Parental Inversion

Parental inversion is when the child has to be strong for the adult. It's when the adult draws emotional strength from the child. It's rampant in our society because we adults don't know how to be adults. Children, and I include teen-agers where it is especially prevalent, don't know any better – when their parent is hurting, of course they want to be strong for them. But they aren't equipped to be. They aren't supposed to be.

We adults are supposed to be strong for our children. We adults are supposed to show by example the Christian life of long-suffering and self-sacrifice, flowing out of beautiful and rich intimacy with the Lord. When we frequently receive that abundance of his presence directly from him, we can sacrifice to ourselves because we're overflowing with Jesus. We never don't have enough.

But instead, often we don't spend enough time with him (if any) to get that overflow. So we live from crisis to crisis, in fear that we won't have enough. And we pull our children into adult responsibilities and adult concerns that they aren't emotionally equipped to deal with. It breaks the heart of God when children can't be children.

But there's hope for parental inversion. If this is you, get counseling, get help. You cannot do this alone. For your children's sake, if not for your own.

We get out of parental inversion by coming to the place where Jesus is a real person we commune with, and he gives us the emotional support we need, instead of drawing it from our kids. We get out of parental inversion by sacrificing our safety in the crisis. By risking not having enough. By trusting he'll give us enough.

We know he's enough because we've lived it. We put our trust in him when it was all on the line, and he came through. Maybe not how we wanted, but he came through how he wanted and we're still standing. So we can sacrifices ourselves in whatever crisis we face, for the sake of our kids. That's the example they need to see.