FamilyLife Today®

Jim Burns: You know, we as parents sometimes make big demands. We expect you. We've always had Christmas Eve Chinese dinner. And so you need to be there. You know, there's no ifs, sounds, or buts. We said to our kids, Jesus, we hate to tell you this, but Jesus probably wasn't born on the 25th. So Christmas is whenever we can all get together. And we said Thanksgiving doesn't have to happen on a Thursday.

Ann Wilson: Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Anne Wilson.

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: And I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is Family Life Today. All right, we've got Jim Burns and Ron Deal in the studio today talking about when your adult child strays, trading heartache for hope. This is a great day for parents.

Ann Wilson: And we're going to get super practical today of what does this look like? How can we do this? And especially with the holidays coming up, you're not going to want to miss today. Hey, walk through this, either blended family or bio family. And I guess it's in relation to boundaries and protecting honor. And keep your mouth shut and the welcome mat out. So all those are playing in here. So your son shows up for Thanksgiving or Christmas or just the weekend with his boyfriend. Maybe they're married. And they want to spend the weekend in your house.

Welcome mats out. I'm going to keep my mouth shut. Do they sleep at your house? And you have little kids in the home that are three and four years old. I'm just getting real practical. There's families that have that. And they're like, could you coach me? I'm not sure what to do. If I put a boundary up, it feels like a fence.

Jim Burns: It's hard. And I don't think there's one answer. There's going to be people who are going to say, well, I would do it differently than what I'm going to suggest. But my feeling with whatever if it even if it was the young daughter who's living boyfriend is coming. I think you say, hey, you know what? We love you and we care for you deeply. In our home, this is our boundary. We know that can upset you. This really isn't about you. We would do this with anybody. We encourage you to come. We want to have you at Thanksgiving.

If we can help you figure out another place, but we just don't want you to do that. We did this with our brother-in-law who was living with a gal. And I had to make the call. I said, hey, here's the situation. Years later, he became a Christian. And you know what he said? I really respected that.

Ann Wilson: Really?

Jim Burns: Yeah. And he said, I don't have to sleep in the room. I can sleep on the couch. And I went, okay, great, thanks. And so he respected our boundary, but it was a hard thing to say. But I think you have to do it that way.

Ann Wilson: Yeah, right. But Jim, you even took the emotion out of it.

Jim Burns: Yeah.

Ann Wilson: I think, you know, I think we we could never let you. It's just, hey,

Jim Burns: It's not judgment. You're not if once we get into judgment, that's when they get back on their heels and the judgment. You know, and they can feel judged anyway. But when you say, hey, in our house, this is and it's for everybody. You know, we're not we're not doing this just for you.

Ann Wilson: And you may think this is stupid, you know, but this is just how we do it. And we love you guys so much. We want you to be here. We're so excited.

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: Right. That part right there is so important. And in fact, I would say lead with that. I love what Jim just said. That is an incredible answer. If you started it with listen, because we love you so much, because we're looking forward to our time with you, I need to talk to you about how we would prefer you come and stay. So you lead with that to say, in other words, always think of this as a dance. I've got to move towards you to gain influence. If all I'm doing is running away from you and screaming from the other side of the park, you know, there's nothing attractive about that.

So I 've got to move towards you in softness. And at the same time say, no, we would prefer it because this is our home. Now, when you go to their home, Dave, let's turn the question around. Let's say you're going to their home.

Ann Wilson: Yeah.

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: It might be a different response because you don't get to tell them what to do with what's theirs. You manage your your resources. So in other words, you might make a decision not to stay with them to get a hotel or something. That's your call. But you don't put that a guilt trip on them. You don't make it an issue for them to figure out. You manage it.

Ann Wilson: Yeah, it's interesting. I don't know if you guys remember. I mean, we're old enough to remember Gary Smalley.

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: Sure.

Jim Burns: Yeah, oh yeah.

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: I remember years ago, when he talked about did you ever sleep talking about a closed spirit?

Jim Burns: Yeah.

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: And he used his hand when you close the spirit and there's a broken relationship. He walked through how do you open up somebody's spirit? And one of the first things he said is you got to get lower than them.

Jim Burns: Mhm.

Ann Wilson: Honor.

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: Yeah, you just even physically he said, you know, don't approach them above. I'm thinking of a squirrel again. If you come in big, they're running away. If you come in tender and down at their level, you're saying I'm humbling myself to say I'm sorry. Can we talk? And something happens to that spirit. It's like, oh, maybe we can talk, you know? And that's what I think you're saying.

Jim Burns: Yeah, and part of that is safety. You know, I'm thinking of a woman who was she was asking me, how do I get to my son because my daughter-in-law is not letting me get to my son or my grandkids. I said, didn't your daughter-in-law really like coffee? And she goes, yeah. And I said, well, why don't you get her a card? She gave her a $25 Starbucks card. Just went by and because she wasn't letting her babysit. She wasn't letting her And they live nearby. And they had had some conversations with the son about this, but they don't really even see him much.

So then the next week she did the same thing. The next week she did the same thing. The daughter-in-law who had not been in a relationship, probably intimidated by this great lady. But the daughter-in-law said, hey, why don't we have coffee together? Well, they started it and then she now watches the kids. She they all went to Cooperstown together on a trip where they watched the kids, you know, during all this stuff that they were doing. And you know, she got the relationship that she wanted.

Ann Wilson: Started with a Starbucks.

Jim Burns: It started with a thoughtful

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: Yeah.

Jim Burns: gesture instead of saying you are driving me nuts because I can't see my son or my kids, my grandkids because you're blocking me. It became that now she's even kind of using this woman as a mentor. That's the practical side to it. Sometimes it's as simple as that. That's why I'm saying

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: You know, self-control is at the heart of everything we're talking about. Jim said it earlier and it's if you're going to walk into that park and not chase the squirrel when that's all you know to do, but you're going to slow down, you're going to try to be calm, you can try to be attractive, you're going to wait and be patient. How do you make that shift? At the end of the day, I think one of the things we want to encourage parents to chase within themselves is what is this desperation in me? What is this thing that absolutely, positively has to get you to turn around and repent right now?

What is that about? Now, I'm going to just think out loud for a minute. And I'd love for you guys to join me because I think for everybody it's different. But it could be that one of the things you 're wrestling with is your own sense of failure. What did I not do that brought them to this place? In other words, what you're really chasing in your child's repentance is you feeling better about you. And that's a little upside down. And you will never be self-controlled if that's allowed to dominate how you respond and react.

For some people, it's not necessarily about failure. It's just about the fear, fear of your child's eternity, fear of where they're leading, fear of bringing negative impact to the grandchildren in their home because of their behavior. Like those are all very, very real. I'm not saying or suggesting that those aren't real. What I 'm saying is you just need to know what that pain is, what that discomfort is, where your desperation is coming from because you got to you got to talk to that part of yourself or it's just going to continue to dominate.

Ann Wilson: So you're getting to the root, Ron. You're getting to the root of why is this bothering so much?

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: Well, I think I mean, Jim, it's chapter three of your book. I think we as parents have to get to the place where chapter three, you are not defined by your adult child's choices.

Jim Burns: There it is. There it is.

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: True emotional health requires a mindset reframing from I failed as a parent to my child is an independent adult who chose a different path. That's a hard journey.

Jim Burns: You know, it's funny because I was thinking the same thing when he was talking about self-control, which is so key and critical. It 's a mindset change. If I'm in negative self-control issue, it's a mindset change. And the Bible talks about you renew your mind. It doesn't mean that the circumstances is going to change, but an illustration I like to give is Justin married a very needy young woman. And the parents were not in agreement in this. And the reason they were living they've been living together and then she got pregnant and then they got married.

So they're not happy. So she sat in my office and I said, well, what else is true? Well, we love the baby. The baby's now two. And they smiled. And I said, well, what else is true? Well, actually, you know, he's not going to church and she's not going to church. She's against it. But they actually asked my other daughter, they said, and her husband to be the godparents. And they're really strong Christians. So that's neat that they're really actively taking place in a godparenting type thing. Well, what else is true? Well, actually, this Mother's Day Justin, you know, came to me and took me out to lunch and wrote me a really nice Mother's Day card.

Now, it didn't change that the young woman is not the woman of their dreams. But they did a self-control check. They did a mind reframe their mindset. And all of a sudden they went, you know what? We can be in this relationship. We don't like it necessarily, but we can do it. And And so they focused on some of the things that were good because almost all the time you can do a mindset check and it will not necessarily change your circumstance, but it can change your attitude. And that makes all the difference in the world when you're dealing with an adult child who's strayed big time.

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: Yeah, and you know, you know better than because you talk to a lot of parents in this area. For a lot of parents, they feel like they can't get there. They lay in bed every single night for decades thinking I failed, I failed, I failed. Because they had one goal. And the goal didn't happen. And you have to renew your mind. You have to say, God, give me a sense of peace about this that I did the best I could and that's okay.

Ann Wilson: I think of all the nights parenting that I have not slept because I 've been thinking about my kids has been when they have become adults. There were teenage years too that like, oh, this is, you know, I'm worried about them. I'm thinking. But with adult kids, you don't have control. You don't have a voice. You have a different relationship which is wonderful and beautiful. But man, I have found myself as a mom of adult kids like thinking, worrying, health, grandkids, all of that. And I can get myself in this cycle of like, oh boy, oh boy.

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: And I sleep pretty good.

Ann Wilson: He does. He's over there just like he's poked. He's out. He never worries. And what has helped me is I have to picture myself. This is a visual kind of prayer. I picture myself in front of Jesus. And I 'm telling him in prayer like, Lord, this is bothering me. This is worrying me. And then I have to visually see myself handing my kids and grandkids over to Jesus and saying, you have them. You love them more than I do. I need to get some sleep. Can you just take care of all of this for me?

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: I love that. That's a prayer of relinquishment.

Ann Wilson: And you know what happens is I fall asleep.

Jim Burns: Isn't that beautiful? Yeah, it's a prayer of relinquishment. That prayer of relinquishment. I mean, Jesus had a prayer of relinquishment. He said, not my will, but your will. He said it three times. So even Jesus had to say that to the Father three times. Not my will, but your will. In case you didn't hear me, I guess. Not my will, but But that in that prayer of relinquishment, you know, we're saying, I relinquish my children to you, God. You know what you're doing and I don't. You're God. I'm not. But that's a discipline. That's a spiritual discipline.

Ann Wilson: Yep.

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: And it's a hard prayer because Jesus sweat blood.

Jim Burns: Yeah.

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: So if you're a parent and you're intense and you're feeling that, that's normal.

Jim Burns: But you got to let it go.

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: And we have to embrace that as normal too that there are going to be those kind of days. And just because there's those kinds of days, that doesn't mean that we can't rise above our circumstances sometimes.

Ann Wilson: And if you're thinking as a parent that you're the only one going through that, that's a lie. We're all We're all struggling.

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: Yeah, yeah. Let's say the word grief. Because that's what you guys are hitting around at is don't be anxious about anything but by prayer and supplication present your request. Here's my children, Lord. And I have to grieve that they're not doing what's right. They're not living the way. I don't have any power over that. I have to grieve that I don't have any power. I have to Like there's a sadness in all of this that just has to be acknowledged. Just don't let your sadness turn you into somebody who chases the squirrel. Like that's really important.

The sadness is real. It needs to be acknowledged, but it cannot be the thing that dominates you. Otherwise, you end up making the same mistakes and making it worse.

Jim Burns: And what I say to parents all the time is that there is a sense of loss when you invested two decades of your life with your kids and you kind of have told them what to do by the teen years. It's not always working. But you know, you kind of been in charge and then now you're not in charge. And so acknowledge the loss. Kathy, when when this happened as our kids got older, I I described it as Kathy is the son and we have three planets revolving around the sun. And all of a sudden the three planets are gone and she's not sure what to do.

And now she only has one planet revolving and that's me by the way. I think I got her at home. I'm revolving around her. And she had to reinvent how am I going to do the rest of my life? And the interesting you know, we're we're not talking about empty nest, but when you're in the empty nest, that could be age 48. That's what the you know, statistics are. You're going to be in the empty nest longer. So you've got to reinvent yourself. And so when your child is an adult and does new things, then you too can do that.

The people who are winning at that are the moms and the dads who are saying, you know what? I'm going back to the gym. I haven't been gym for a long time. That was me. I went I'm going back to the gym. You know, I've got these kids and I'm now they're gone. So I can go to the gym. Kathy said, I'm going to jump into a Bible study that I I just didn't have time to do. And so just little simple things. We started creating a dream list that wasn't just about trips to Italy.

We did have that on our dream list, but also just, you know, other things about our physical health, our spiritual health, our friendships that we had neglected, our community that we had neglected partly because they were teens. That's what we've got to be able to do. Really reinvent our life. And in doing that, that doesn't take away our the pain at night when your child is straying. But what it does do is it gives us a different perspective and it makes us stronger.

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Here here's the thought just came to my mind. Our child is strayed if they've strayed. And we think they strayed. But the visual just hit me is they're not an inch away from Jesus.

Jim Burns: Yeah.

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: He's right wherever they are, he's there. They've strayed from us. They maybe strayed from our upbringing in the faith we've raised them to believe in.

Ann Wilson: And they've walked away from Jesus.

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: But they're not a second away from him. He is right there holding them, walking them, maybe nudging them back. And if there's a parent that's safe and trustworthy and standing there with delight in their eyes, there's a good chance he's probably going to nudge them back, but you don't know.

Jim Burns: Ron.

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: But you can trust that they're okay.

Jim Burns: Yeah, and you can

Ann Wilson: And so are you.

Jim Burns: No, and you can trust that he is there by their side even when we don't see it or feel it. I will never leave you or forsake you.

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: Right.

Jim Burns: And that's an important message for people to know and believe. And we will stray from that belief. And then we've got to come back to that belief. So I love that illustration. Yeah.

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: Yeah, so for a lot of us, we have holidays coming up which I'm I'm laughing because I'm like, oh, great. I love Thanksgiving. I love Christmas, but it happens. They come in the house. They're sitting at the table talking about adult kids and daughters-in-law and sons-in-law. And I'm just going to be honest. I'm fearful sometimes where it's going to go and how it's going to end. And we talked earlier sometimes like no topics. We're not ever going to we're not going to bring up anything in the world. And so you've danced around all that, but if somebody brings up something and it could, you know, we've had Christmases that didn't end well.

Ann Wilson: I think everybody has. I think it's an illusion to think that everyone has to

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: To help us navigate, you know?

Ann Wilson: And you too, Ron, even with with families that are coming together and it it can be a little more complicated even with blended families.

Jim Burns: Yes, sure. Well, what immediately comes to my mind for complex family situations when kids are moving between homes is the calendar every year is got to be negotiated about when they're going to be at your house, when they're going to be at the other house, when grandparents are going to be with you, who's not, when you may have to celebrate Christmas before Christmas Day or after Christmas Day. Like all of that is true. But again, back to our conversation, if you're feeling desperate to change your child's path, then you feel like, okay, we got them for three days.

We got to make, you know, inroads during No, no. I just think that's the wrong time. You need to delight in them. You need to celebrate Christmas. You need to let that there may be boundaries where you say, well, at our house, we make Christmas about Jesus. And that may not be familiar to your child. That may be something that they're not practicing in their life. And so you just manage it the way you want to manage it, but don't shove it down their throat. You know, look for that way to uphold your faith and values and what's important in your home.

And at the same time, not necessarily have a huge expectation for how they join you in that. You want to go to church, Christmas Eve service, they don't go to church. You go and say, we'll see you when you when we get back. Like it's the demand that ruins your influence.

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: And don't shame them for not going.

Jim Burns: There you go. You lose your influence as a parent when your child feels unsafe and at threat.

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: And when you say the word demand, you know, we as parents sometimes make big demands. We expect you. We've always had Christmas Eve Chinese dinner. And so you need to be there. You know, there's no if, sounds, or buts. We said to our kids, Jesus, we we hate to tell you this, but Jesus probably wasn't born on the 25th. So Christmas is whenever we can all get together. And And we said Thanksgiving doesn't have to happen on a Thursday.

Ann Wilson: We do that too.

Jim Burns: The point that I'm saying is make it comfortable for them. So like this Thanksgiving, we're having a pickleball tournament. It has nothing to do with being thankful. Well, I'll be thankful to get out of it alive. But we're having a pickleball tournament. And that's kind of what we're going to do. And we're going to have a great time and we're going to have some fun food and And everybody's coming, interesting enough because they wanted to come on that day.

Ann Wilson: So fun.

Jim Burns: In fact, for kind of an extended time, that's that's great. But it's kind of we're talking now about pickleball. We're not talking about any of the other kinds of things. So they're looking forward to it. It's going to be fun. We're going to have a little tournament, you know, things like that. And I think we have to do that. Put energy into it. Make it something that would could be fun and memorable as opposed to just rushing through this.

Ann Wilson: It's good.

Jim Burns: Last year we gave our kids in We've been giving them experiences for Christmas. So we give them experiences that we all do together. So the experience And it costs me a lot more money. I'll just tell you that. The experience was we lived by Disneyland. And the experience was we're going to Disneyland.

Ann Wilson: That's cool.

Jim Burns: And so the grandkids went crazy. They all loved it. And so they go, let's do this next year. We I think we doubled what the cost was for us on this trip. Not Disney as you well know is not cheap.

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: Yeah.

Jim Burns: And you know what? We're going to do it again because it became a

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: Yeah.

Jim Burns: experience, a memorable experience that they liked and we had a blast. And I said, hey, we don't have to eat all together, but if you want to, uh, we're going to eat at the brisket place or whatever. Well, they guess where they all ate at the brisket plates because they all wanted to be together.

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: Yeah.

Jim Burns: You don't demand it. You just say, hey, do you want to do something? Make it so inviting that they go, we'll do that. That would be great.

Ann Wilson: So you you're putting a focus on something else like it's going to be a game. We're going to go do this. Something that's not just like talking to

Jim Burns: Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no. No, and there there are bad Like in our family again, there are boundaries. So my extended family, there's a lot of alcoholism in our family. And we host the Burns family Christmas. We do it for 3 hours. The interesting side to it is we can do 3 hours. We have a blast. If we did 5 hours, it might blow The whole extended family thing might blow up, right? So we do it from 12 to 3. Sometimes people stay for 5 hours, but the people know they can kind of come and go.

So you you develop those boundaries that are healthy boundaries

Ann Wilson: Right.

Jim Burns: that don't put it in an awkward situation.

Ann Wilson: I like that.

Jim Burns: And so those are just practical ideas because some people are still going what but they're not coming to that dinner or they're not doing this. Then

Ann Wilson: Who cares?

Jim Burns: Yeah, honestly, in the in the line of things you want the relationship, not the tradition, so to speak.

Ann Wilson: Well, I would add this. We've got a little time before the holidays. Start praying now.

Jim Burns: Yeah.

Ann Wilson: Start praying as your kids come in. Jesus, help me to find delight in my kids even maybe if I'm totally in disagreement of what they're living out right now. And what's helped me is I like those like reminders. This is what I delight in. These are the things that I love about them. And you may need to walk or journal or just pray. Lord, remind me of all the great things. Maybe you don't see it now, but you have in the past. And God's delighting in in them all the time. And And you hate to fake it.

But if you start reminding yourself and praying about all these people coming in, get your heart right first.

Jim Burns: Sure. Yeah.

Ann Wilson: And I think that will really help too.

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: Don't ever underestimate fun.

Ann Wilson: Yes.

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: You know, that that's big. But you know, when when you were saying that, I thought And you know, what's the game where you can't say certain words to try and get people to guess taboo?

Jim Burns: Yeah.

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: I was thinking you need somebody with a buzzer, your wife, your husband to say, okay, certain words we cannot say. You know, whatever it is. You just like Ron. self-control yourself in these three days or these three hours. We're not going there. We are going to delight in what

Jim Burns: Right. That Yeah, that is great. And it'll say bruises too from your spouse kicking you under the table.

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: Yeah, exactly.

Ann Wilson: Scars Scars may develop on your tongue, but that's better than the than anything else.

Jim Burns: That's so good.

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: Yeah.

Ann Wilson: Well, Jim, do you want to pray? Like you know and you've dealt with parents that are going through this, you know that that is probably one of the greatest things we can do.

Jim Burns: Yeah. Yeah, I would love to. Almighty God, I pray for our listeners, the ones who are watching. I pray for their heart that Lord, you would be close to their heart, that you would come alongside them. You promise to bring them comfort. And I pray that you would bring them comfort. And even as we learn to delight in our kids, even when they're not living that way, we are reminded that we are to delight ourselves in you and that you'll give us the desires of our heart. You know the desires. And I pray that you would be close to our children even as we relinquish them to you.

And God, we pray that in the end, uh, they will return. And we pray that God, you'll give us the strength and the courage and the boldness and the power by your Holy Spirit to to care for our adult children who have strayed. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Dave Wilson and Ron Deal: Amen.

Ann Wilson: Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry celebrating 50 years of helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.