Generational Healing

This growth I’ve been writing of is not just a process of healing for our families and for us in the here-and-now. The work we do with God, the hoping, struggling, trusting, and waiting, will bless generations that will come after us. Our grandchildren will be less fearful and more free because of our efforts, anointed by God. They will build on our growth, just as we’ve benefited from those who have gone before us. As I reflect on this truth, I think of my grandfather Wesley Hugh Gates, who grew up on a poor, little farm in Oklahoma.

Early one morning when he was about five years old, hammering in his home awakened him. So, my grandfather took his little brother by the hand, and together they walked into the kitchen to find their father building a coffin. My grandfather’s fifteen year-old sister had died in the middle of the night. She had been sick with the measles, and in her weakened condition an infection slipped in and claimed her body: this was the explanation my grandfather would hear years later from her doctor. But not from his family: he heard silence from them. His parents decided that the best way to deal with the tremendous loss was to not talk about it. And they never did. The young woman was buried in an unmarked grave, and that was that.

Of course, my grandfather never stopped feeling the loss of his sister. And through his grief, he chose to live differently. In his twenties, he even returned to look for her grave, somehow found it by sorting through cemetery records, and gave her a tombstone. As a father, he taught my mother that sadness didn’t have to be buried, and talking about feelings was healthy and good. Over the years, a pattern of hiding was dismantled, and in its place healing grew. And here I am, a clinical psychologist who helps others grieve and mourn daily: just two generations removed from that little farm in Oklahoma, and that dusty graveyard where a fifteen year old girl was quietly laid to rest in an unmarked grave.

Healing across generations is moving beyond words, and I have the honor of witnessing it daily in my work: clients who are deciding to live differently, facing great pain with even greater truth and love, and blessing future generations in the process. I see “Dan”, who sought and found sobriety from alcohol and drugs, and in the process broke an addiction cycle of violence and chaos that goes back at least five generations. I see “Joan”, who courageously faced the traumas of physical and sexual abuse from her childhood, and is now practicing intimacy differently with her family members. And I see “Jack”, who can be a spiritual father to dozens of young men because he was able to come to terms with the woundedness of his own father, and forgive him.

Healing and growth in the here-and-now blesses future generations, always has and always will. Brokenness does not have to have the final say. If we cooperate with Him in truth and love, God will redeem the lost years in miraculous ways. Where do you want healing to happen in your family, and what can you do today to start that process?