Soft Answers: Healing Broken Mother-Child Relationships

Mother's Day brings up complex emotions for many, but Proverbs 15:1 offers wisdom: "a soft answer turns away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger." This guidance helps both children dealing with difficult maternal relationships and mothers trying to respond better to their kids.

• Mother's Day and Father's Day are often the heaviest times of year for people with broken family relationships
• Don't use this weekend to rehash bitterness or anger toward anyone
• This holiday might reveal you're not as healed as you thought from past hurts
• For mothers, practice giving soft answers when tired or stressed
• Many responses come from fear rather than intention
• Take time to thank the "standing moms" who support your children
• It truly takes a village to raise children well

If you've been blessed by women who have stood in the gap for your family, take a moment this weekend to express your gratitude to them.

Chapters

• 0:00 Mother's Day Encouragement Intro
• 0:34 Soft Answers Turn Away Wrath
• 1:35 Healing From Childhood Pain
• 3:30 Advice for Tired Mothers
• 5:16 Gratitude for Standing Moms

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey y'all, it's Saturday and guess what, it's almost Mother's Day and guess what? I've got a word of encouragement for all of us. Might be a little bit of coaching, if you will, but Mother's Day is coming up, so this is. I think this is going to be good. I'm going to come out of Proverbs 15, verse 1, a soft answer turneth away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger. Another version of it, I think, is a soft answer turneth away wrath, but harsh words stir up anger. And the reason why I want to share this on our awesome faith fuel is because there's going to be a lot of moms and a lot of folks, a lot of folks who feel like they don't need to honor their moms because they either came from broken relationships or they're in a broken relationship with their mom, or maybe your mom has passed and you don't know how to deal with this day. You're still grieving, but there are also moms who haven't been around. You know they feel guilty for how they've treated their kids and different situations, so there's a lot of this weekend.

Speaker 1: 1:06

To me, mother's Day and Father's Day for me are usually the heaviest times of the year in terms of people reaching out, asking for prayer, because this is where our brokenness really, truly shows up for real, right. So a soft answer, turn away wrath is important this weekend because, for one thing, if you're the child right and you didn't have a great relationship again, you know how like we pray and we ask God to bless us and all the abundance and want the healing. You go to church, you get happy, you come home. But there are things that you need to do in terms of your own character, our own character, so that we don't allow bitterness to seep in or to sit and reside with us. Bitterness and anger. If you don't know what to say, you know that saying, if you don't know what to say, don't say nothing at all.

Speaker 1: 1:53

This is a weekend that y'all we're going to try to practice that Don't force people who are in a season where they haven't truly forgiven what's happened to them. You got to give people a chance to get over it. But also, if you have gone through some things and I'm saying this from experience okay, I'm not saying I did not have a perfect relationship with my mother, I went through a bad ministry, I went through all kinds of stuff, okay, so I'm saying this as a person who's healed for the most part from all of this? Who's healed for the most part from all of this? But don't one, don't use this as the opportunity this weekend to try to rehash or stir up bitterness or anger towards anybody. I'm praying that this weekend, especially for Mother's Day, that you'll allow yourself to be healed and to forgive. You might not think you have that thing in your heart about your mom, but I bet you that the thought comes even this weekend. This weekend is kind of a little bit of a trigger that you'll realize that you're not as healed as you thought you were. You kind of buried it. You buried the issues, you buried the pain, you buried the disappointment. So I pray that this weekend is when you actually release all that and you forgive that person, forgive your mothers.

Speaker 1: 3:10

Now, if you're a mother, that's from a child's perspective. We're all children, right? Okay? From a mom's perspective, this is not the weekend, this isn't the time for you to pick up your throne. This, I think, for me, is where I'm more introspective, I'm more self-aware of the kind of mom I am, and I start to think about what are some of the things that I want to do better, what are some of the things that I want to change. So a soft answer for us means that we know y'all, we are tired. We're tired physically, emotionally, mentally. But we have to start practicing using soft answer with our kids and not just pop off because we are emotionally tired or scared. A lot of times, moms, we respond out of fear and so we pop off real quickly and we don't want to do that to our kids. Soft answer turns away wrath, grievous words or harsh words it just stares up anger. And satanith away wrath, grievous words or harsh words, it just stares up anger. So there's both a teaching for all of us as kids. So how? Letting go of any bitterness, letting go of any judgment and just truly just thanking god. Thank god for the mother he gave you. He might not have given you the mom that you wanted, but he gave you the mom you got and that's that okay. So we thank God for that. And then, as a mother I mean mother, godmother, bonus mother, stepmother, those playing that role, those who are raising the kids okay, you have an impact and influence in the kid's life that you need to. We need to practice a soft answer, especially in the environment right now. I really hope that bless you. Happy Mother's Day.

Speaker 1: 4:52

I did say thank you on one of the live prayers. No, that's not true. I said it on Thursday, the Thursday teaching this week, and I do want to say it again publicly, to thank all of the women in my life who love my daughter, love of my daughter, take care of her, they bless her, they pray for her. I'm grateful for all the standing moms. I'm trying not to throw out too many names, but there's a few women, and especially that, like, honestly, I don't even know that they'll watch this video. I might tag y'all to say thank you, but there's a few women who they're still on my daughter's emergency pickup from elementary school and my daughter's 16, because they are people that I can trust. They're, they open their homes to us and, um, they have been standing moms and you know we don't see each other a lot, we don't even say a lot, okay, but I know that if anything went down, these women would have my daughter.

Speaker 1: 5:52

So I want to do a shout out to Sheila Kane and I love you. Thank you so much for blessing me. You've blessed my family for 12 years of my daughter's life, so I was just counting, like my god. That's been a long time 12 or 11. You have one of those um, so thank you so much. Thank you so much for that. And then there's a whole family, actually, that um that have stood in as family for us.

Speaker 1: 6:23

So I want wanna thank the Neels and their daughters, because they've all stood in as big sister, slash, mama, slash, auntie, slash, everything, so just as a mom, and then, like I said, there's others, but these two families in particular have really, really blessed us. So may I encourage you to just say thank you to those standing moms, those who you might not be related to, but those who have been really helping it does take a village and those who have been, you know, helping you with your kids. I hope this blesses you y'all. All right, I love you. I'm gonna pick up my spirits now because I felt like I was gonna cry and I refused to cry on camera. All right, I love y'all. Have an amazing weekend, happy Mother's Day and God bless you. All right, I will see you next week. Bye.