He’ll Be the Death of Me (episode 51)

0:00 If you love a prodigal, you can discover, help, and hope for your wilderness journey right here at the When You Love a Prodigal podcast. And also help and hope for your own life journey. So welcome to our podcast, Season Two. If you have been a listener, I hope you heard the finale of Season One, a conversation with my son Josh, our former prodigal. It was honest and hard and tender. We received so many wonderful comments. It's not too late to listen to it. Just go to our podcast, any podcast platform, and look for it. It's episode 50. And if this is your first time to listen, please keep coming. We have so many things to talk about and people to learn from, all to give us some help and hope on this prodigal journey.

1:08 If you want to know how this story came about, because you're new and don't know, you can go back to the very beginning, to episodes like one to three, and listen to those and you'll get the background, which will help you understand probably. Now to open a new season, I'm going to share with you some of the important ways I have learned to survive a prodigal, and especially to love them and keep a relationship with them. This will also be sort of an introduction to a series of question and answer sessions that we will have occasionally over the next few months. Two years ago, I did a message on transforming treasures from a prodigal wilderness. I listened to it again to prepare for this episode and I thought, why should I try and write something new? I love the way that one turned out. And so today for this episode, I'm going to let you listen to a portion of that message that I gave. As you listen, again, to transforming treasures that you will gain from your prodigal wilderness, as you listen be sure to jot down your thoughts that you want to apply in your relationship with your

2:42 prodigal. First thing I want to talk about is some lessons I learned about what actually will help to bring the loved one back. A lot of times we're told that you should have tough love, and I'm going to explain what you should have, but tough love just says resistance, push away, and they feel rejected. And so it often stops the thing that's most important, and that is maintaining relationship. Doesn't mean it's always a good and easy relationship, but you don't let their angry words be met with your angry words, or their wrong behavior be met with such things that push them out, and that we act more like the father in the prodigal son story who let his son go. But when he's watching for him and he sees him coming, he just picks his robes up and runs to greet him, and his son's trying to, he's trying to say, I'm sorry, I apologize, just let me be a servant. And the father says, oh my son who was lost is found, and he's back. Here, put my robe on, take my sandals, let's have a party. And that's how God feels about us. Every time we wander in any way and we come back, God's saying, I'm so excited that you're back. And it's how he feels about our loved ones as well. And so let me

4:15 just quickly go over several things there and then get into what is the most exciting part. First of all, you do need boundaries. I just would not call them tough love. You need to have understanding of what's acceptable in your family to respect for each other and how we treat people in our family and how we take care of our home and how we represent when we're out in the community. And those kind of, and then as they get older, and they would like to come back and live because you know, they're out of a job, then can they come back? Well, we let Josh come back several times, but there were always some understanding. These are the boundaries for living in our home. This is acceptable and expected. This is not acceptable and won't be allowed. And then when he broke them repeatedly and we said, well, looks like you're choosing to move out. He says, you're kicking me out. No, no, we are glad for you to be here, but you can't seem to be able to live by our agreed upon boundaries. And agreed, and the consequence that we agreed on was that you would not stay there. And so that's an important part, but even more important than understanding that we have the boundaries and the consequences clearly defined. So it's not a surprise that, sorry, this is happening to you, but it's the way we do it. I'm just going to mention three ways that we do it. The

5:47 first is with love. Our God lavishes love on us always and forever. Says the Lord appeared to us, Jeremiah tells us in the past saying, I have loved you with an everlasting love. I have drawn you with loving kindness. And God calls on us to do that. And we'll talk more about that later. But he says when God put his love on the line, this is from the message for us by offering his son in sacrificial death until death, while we were of no use for him whatsoever. Now, there are plenty of times when our prodigal hours and raptures will do and say things. It's like you just, you don't even want to see them right now.

6:37 But God says, even when you were like that, doing the worst, not doing anything I wanted, you come and I'm going to give you the love that I have for you. He tells us this amazing thing. He says, you are able to love with my love because I have loved you and poured my love into you. He told me that one night when I was having a really hard time with Josh. And he says, Judy, let me show you. I've given you my love for this boy. I told you I was sending him to you and I have given you my love. And therefore you have it for this boy. Wow, it worked. It helped. It wasn't always perfect for me. But I mean, I wasn't at receiving it. He will enable us to love even when they all say they're famous. I hate you, which they do often, or just do the things that are disrespectful. And a second thing to give is mercy. Our God loves mercy.

7:43 His faithful love of the Lord never ends. His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness. His mercies began afresh every morning. He tells us that mercy triumphs over judgment. He says, how much have I forgiven you? Yeah, a lot. He says, think you can forgive them? Yeah, they're going to do things that need forgiveness. But can you forgive? Even though there might be consequences, you can still forgive. If you're keeping a track of them all, then that's not probably forgiven. Steve would say he would get so frustrated with Josh sometimes in the ways that the things that Josh would do or the ways he spoke to me sometimes. And Steve would just, especially when he wouldn't work, Josh, Steve called him the most creative work of order he'd ever seen. And he just avoided work. We watched him watch his friends fix his car. He didn't have a raise a hand to help. And that just really bothered Steve. And every time Steve would start thinking, you're just a no good nothing, and the Lord would say, Steve? And he would say, oh Lord. So he says, as much as there might be this much difference between me and Josh, she said, the gap between me and the Lord is so much greater. And God has forgiven me. How can I not give mercy to this boy, our son? And then grace.

9:20 As we live in his grace, we're rescued by his mercy, as we live in his love and are rescued by his mercy. Then he will give us the grace to us to do it and then to extend it to our loved ones. What is that? It's basically an undeserved gift from God. It's what God wants to give us, plus even more than he could give us, that he has to in a sense. He is the gift of God. And he is able to make all grace abound to you so that in all things, at all time, having all that you need, you will abound at every good work. He says, give grace. So one of the things God said to me early in this journey was when you make mistakes with this boy, and you will, and I did, he says, make them on the side of grace. And that's not always easy. And it's also not acceptable to some people. They tell me I'm wrong. But I want to read just a little bit from our chapter on grace in this book. It's called The Voice of Grace, because the way we most often are ungracious to those we love is by our mouths, by the way we speak to them. And so I just want to read you a few things here. That's disgraceful. You are so ungrateful. Those phrases

10:54 contain a word with the Latin root for grace, or lack of it in this case. They mean without grace. And they are words that any of us might have said to our Prodigals, because they would have been true. But God tells us, your lips have been anointed with grace, since God has blessed you forever. He says, let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. I'm going to give you just a real quick little way to watch the voice that you use with your loved one. Practical approaches. Wait.

11:42 Count to 10, or 20, or whatever you need before you speak. Moderate. Speak slowly, calmly, gently, and firmly. Think. Will these words add fuel to the fire? Consider. Would you like someone to speak such words to you in that tone of voice? Recognize. This is really important. The words you speak today may be part of your relationship with your Prodigal for all the years to come. It sticks in their minds. Realize your tone of voice can turn neutral words into destructive words. And remember, remember this, you love this person. Most of all, pray.

12:33 Stop before you speak and talk to the Lord. So, good boundaries and defined consequences. Love, mercy, and grace. So what's in it for you? Did you know there are amazing gifts? Now, probably when you're looking for gifts, you don't go out in the wilderness and pick up something. You might get a snake or, you know, one of those lizards that has poisonous or something like that around where I live in Florida. But God has gifts for us in the wilderness. And I'm just going to name four of them, but they're good gifts. 1 John 3, 18 says, Dear children, let us not love with words or speech, but with actions and in truth. And he reminds us again, he gave us love when we didn't deserve it.

13:32 There's a whole chapter on love in my book. One section of it talks about the things that love does. Love speaks truth. It's all about truth. Love gives mercy. Love gives grace. We've talked about those things. Love gives honor. It's all too often that the words we use with our prodigals aren't honoring. We love to, or at least we find ourselves pointing out everything they did wrong and how they're, you know, not making a good life for themselves. And that may be true. But it also, we need to learn to honor. One of the things my son said, he said, one of the things my son said, you need to be firm with your prodigal, but you also need to affirm in any way you possibly can. But here's one that I love.

14:25 It says we're to bless them. And sometimes there's nothing in you that wants to give blessing to that person who's, who's caused a lot of pain. One day when Josh had done something really that made me more than annoyed, he was gone. And I said, all right, Lord, I'm going to bless it. Now, one of the chores my kids have was to do their own laundry. So I went up to Josh's room, found as many of his dirty clothes as I could, and took them down to wash them for him. And as I put every piece of laundry into the washing machine, I said, I bless you, Josh. I bless you, Josh. I bless you, Josh. Now, I don't know that he felt blessed by any of that, but he was because God took my word for it to bless him. And it changed me a whole lot to be able to turn my anger into blessing toward my son.

15:31 On love, this was an incredibly important lesson I learned. One of the things that happened along the way was that I fell in love with this boy. I really went from being a good mom taking care of the kid God had trusted to us to being in love with my son. I remember the day he was born in my heart as my son. And I really cared for him. And I kept saying, Lord, you know, maybe he could at least sign a card for my birthday or Mother's Day love, Josh. No, he couldn't do that because to him to love me was a betrayal of his birth mom. And he just, he couldn't do it.

16:14 She was his mother and he loved her. And so that was understandable. And I said, can't that change? God didn't exactly answer that, but he did say, Judy, don't you understand unconditional love requires nothing in return, including love. He said, you unconditional love, the kind of love I've shared with you to give to this boy doesn't need love in return. He'll probably love you. But that's not the part. That's not unconditional love has no conditions. Another thing I learned was a lot more about grace and understanding.

16:59 Believing in somebody, giving them grace to fail and not get after them or put them down, giving them opportunities to prove they're wanting to make better choices. Sometimes it comes right back in your face, but God says he gives it to us all the time. How often has he given you grace when you didn't do what you said or when you did something hurtful? He gives grace and he asks us to. This one's one of my favorites. Those are gifts. So he gave me an understanding of unconditional love. He gave me the realization that grace is abundant and more than enough. And then this is one of my favorites. He says, he's always at work. You see, the most common question you hear from people who love a product is, how long Lord? How long is this going to go on? For me, the hard part was 15 years. The challenges were beyond that. But the 15 years were really hard, full of really sad things. Psalm 138, the Lord will vindicate me. Your love Lord endures forever. Do not abandon the work of your hands. You're doing this work.

18:20 Don't give up. And he says, yes, what I'm saying to you, don't give up. Your love is going to keep the work happening in this person. Philippians 1.6, love this verse. Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you, or in our case, in Josh, oh yeah, in me too, will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. And so when I would get at a place where I'm like, help, I'm in a fog, I can't see anything, or I'm about to fall down this cliff, I'm out of control, I don't know what to do for this boy. And God said, I'm at work. I'm working. Even if you can't see a thing I'm doing right. It's how we might feel those of us in this virus thing right now. Time you see this, you might know, but we don't know right now. But God says, you don't know what's going to happen.

19:24 And I'm more patient than you are. He says, but I am working in Josh's life. Now, Josh could still resist, but God's always reaching out with love and mercy and grace. Then there's prayer. You know, I'm in ministry, I've been in ministry all my adult life. We pray a lot in our ministry. We pray, you know, at the beginning of a meeting and after a meeting we have days of prayer, we have times of prayer, we pray, we get together to pray, we pray. And then Josh came along and I found out I hardly knew what prayer was. Prayer became for me like my breathing. I was constantly talking to the Lord about this boy. I was on my face, I mean literally I spent a lot of time on my face, begging God to give me what I needed for this, but to be doing the work in him. And I'm going to read you this awesome verse that I love here. I think I put it here. Yes. It's Isaiah 62.

20:41 He says, I have posted watchmen on your walls, Jerusalem. They will never be silent day or night. You who call on the Lord, give yourselves no rest. Okay. So first of all, he says, don't rest in your prayer. Pray always without ceasing, he tells us. And then he says this wonderful thing. He says, give him no rest. God invites us to give him no rest while we bring to him what we're asking until he establishes in this case Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth until he does the work that we're begging him for, pleading for, waiting for in this person we love. He says, don't rest, keep praying. And don't think you are bothering me. Give me no rest. Keep asking, keep asking. And then the last thing I would mention is a final gift God gave me. And it's the gift of gratitude.

21:46 He tells us in the verse, as you know, verse, you know, be thankful in all circumstances for this is God's will for you who belong to Christ Jesus. Don't you think that can't mean what it says? Like, how can we be thankful in every there are so many hard things in this world. There are things I weep over because of people I know. There are things I read about it other places that I'm just weep over what happens to people and what people do to each other. And the tears I wept over this boy just seemed endless. And God says give thanks.

22:33 And that's probably the most transforming thing he did in my life, which teach me to give thanks in all things. I find a lot of times as I start to pray about something, the first words out of my mouth now are thank you, Lord. That wasn't what I was thinking I was going to say. But it is because God's done a work in me to help me understand that gratitude is the best way to express my trust. And I believe that he's God. I believe that he's good. I believe he cares about me and the ones that I love. And so it's, it's a wonderful gift. Let me close with this story. So our son, Josh, for a long time did landscaping, and he was doing this huge hedge with a chainsaw. And behind it was a chain like the fence. And the chainsaw hits the fence. And it kicks back. The chainsaw hits Josh and nice gash. I get this call from his wife who says, Josh is on his way to the trauma ER. He just cut his head open with a chainsaw. And amazingly, the first words that came out of my mouth were thank you, Lord. But the cool thing is, other than that he really wasn't hurt that badly, it turned out it just chipped his skull didn't break it and stopped right above his eye is he

24:06 can't lift the side brownie has a Harry Potter star, but which is cool, you know, and so I got in there to see him. I said, How are you? He says, Well, it had hurt a whole lot when they were cleaning it out. He said, But after I called 911, the next thing I did was say thank you, Lord, because he'd been learning. Just to close, Josh is 37 now. Maybe 38 I lose track. And he's on a second marriage. He has a wife who had brought a daughter in and a four year old daughter and he's about to have another little daughter next week. And so it when you see this, he will have had that baby. They will have. And he's held the same job for five and a half years now. And when I watch him and they live on a little farm and they raise pigs and chickens and he does farm work goes to his all day labor job comes home does farm work and because his wife has Lyme disease, he also fixes dinner cleans up around the house. So he went from being the most creative work of water I've ever seen to being one of the hardest working people I've ever seen. And, you know, spiritually, he's still got growing to do. But then so do I. And he's turned into a good man, a

25:37 responsible person, a great dad and husband. And I just cry when I see him now not sad tears, but joyful tears. It were God has done. It was a long hard journey, but I wouldn't trade it for anything for his sake, as well as for May God bless you with the gifts he wants to give you because a person who's living with you or near you who breaks your heart. Just as we've broken God's heart. May God bless you through this person. Thank you. Was that helpful to you? I hope so. Every time I listen to that message, it speaks to me and is helpful to me. So what thoughts did you jot down? Why don't you pick one to start with? How can you begin to live that out as a way to improve your relationship with your prodigal? I've also listed a number, quite a number of resources to help you in the show notes. So if you need more, look there and see what could help you. Now, about the question and answer sessions, we'll do one every five or six weeks, probably. If you have a question that you would like me and my guests to talk about in the future at a question and

27:12 answer session, you can go to Stay Connected in the show notes, click on my judydouglas.com website, and go to contact and give us your information and just write your question. Let us know what question you would like us to talk about. I would love it if you could take a minute to rate the podcast and if you're listening to Apple, you can write a review. I just pray that you would really be able to learn from this and share it with others if it's been helpful to you. And Lord, I pray for these people. I pray that they would really, as they listen to this and seek to apply it, that you would have a special message for each one. And then I would say you won't want to miss our next episode. My guest will be June Hunt, a well-known counselor, author, and teacher. I've read several of her books and they are filled with wisdom and help for those who love a prodigal. And she has very helpful stories to illustrate the points that she makes. So you don't want to miss that. Thanks for listening. God bless you.