Bamboo fence in the heart

I don’t know how to communicate with my father; I don’t want to listen to him, but I don’t want to contradict him.

Although I want to express my love for my father every time, I always end up making him angry...

At dusk, return home. As usual, he parked the car in the driveway, locked the door, took the keys, and walked towards the sidewalk in the community. The rain in the afternoon was still falling mistily; the sky was very dark, and the air was extremely stuffy. Before I even started today’s brisk walk, I was already sweating all over, and it felt so sticky and uncomfortable!

A quick walk around the neighborhood is a break from my twenty-minute daily exercise routine. When I got home, I parked my car and took out my laptop and a large bag of materials. "Oh! I accomplished nothing today again!" There was still no progress in typing the manuscript, and the materials to be sorted were not moving either. Throughout the whole day, I sat across from my eighty-year-old father like this again, staring at him. I read the newspaper, took him out to get medicine, raised money, and did other chores, and then I got by. I didn't write a single word of the article I had conceived in my mind, and I almost had a heart attack.

Go upstairs and take a shower; the mournful face in the bathroom mirror looks so helpless, with no trace of the flushed face after exercise. After taking a shower, I put on loose clothes and sat on the sofa in the living room. The fan above my head was weakly swaying to create a slight breeze, and the person was so paralyzed...he couldn't gain any strength at all!

The light of the sword and the shadow of the sword

Thinking of the conversation just now: "Dad, I will pick you up half an hour early on Sunday because it is my turn to be on duty and I need to prepare things before worship."

"oh!"

"This Sunday, I have to drive in three different directions to pick up three people from the church. The round trip takes about half an hour, and I have to leave the house an hour and a half early. Alas! I feel tired just thinking about it! It is really not easy to be a good believer. Woolen cloth!"

The father immediately answered: "Okay, from now on, you will stop being a Christian and your life will be happier than anyone else..."

I was speechless for a moment, but still unwilling to give up, I replied to him: "How can you comfort and encourage people like you? It's just talk, why are you so righteous!" I felt extremely useless...

In fact, after retirement, I served in the church: picking up people back and forth on Sundays, going to welcome new students in advance, teaching Sunday school in shifts, visiting during the week, and going to fellowships to testify; to resolve quarrels between couples, to mediate parent-child differences; to listen to misunderstandings and understand differences; They are looking for practical help, spiritual support... these are things I am happy to do. But occasionally when I am tired, I want a little understanding, support and encouragement from my father so that I will not feel discouraged.

However, what you get from your father is often verbal and even psychological hurt. Whenever there is an urgent matter that needs to be completed and there is no time to accompany him, his father always says: "How can this happen! If you don't help me, who will?"

I often wonder why my father can understand other brothers and sisters and ask them to do their best to do the things at hand, but I have to put aside my own important things? Does he think that my affairs are not important at all and there is no need to think about me?

At times like this, I often feel that I am a person with no knowledge, no status, and no way of making money, so why should I fight? I always feel very annoyed. Why was my life so bad that I was born when my family was financially poor and could not afford to go to college? Why didn’t I work harder when I had no prospects, and then when I had the chance to advance?

Sunny after rain

A cloudy day does not mean there is no sun. Although my father is not good at expressing his concern for his children, he often praises my filial piety in front of others. What is going on? Why does he only show kindness and kindness to others, but is stingy in giving warmth and care to his closest family members?

Think about it, sometimes I am like this, just like the Bible says, it is up to me to decide to do good, but it is not up to me to do it! Humans are really small and weak! Although I don’t like how my father treats me, don’t I often repay him in the same way?

There is a famous saying: "A person's personality determines his life's destiny!" Could it be that the fault lies in his own personality? In the past, when his mother was ill, he shouldered the responsibility of the eldest son. In addition to taking care of his mother, he also had to comfort his father. When something urgent happens, I can’t bear to ask my younger or hard-working brothers and sisters to share the labor.

My family advised me not to think that I should take responsibility for everything. If this world was without me for a day, the earth would still function as usual. In fact, other brothers and sisters in the family can share their worries and relieve their labors, so why bother shouldering all the burden on yourself?

Speaking of myself, few people now know how weird my temper is! I have not liked to talk to others since I was a child. Teachers, classmates, father, mother, and guests at home can all be seen as a shadow hiding everywhere. I am introverted, reserved, and not good at interacting with others. Others think I am arrogant. Probably because of this, I don’t know how to communicate with my father. I don’t want to listen to him, but I don’t want to contradict him. Although I wanted to express my love for my father every time, I always ended up making him angry. What should we do?

Obedience comes before filial piety

When I was getting along with a friend recently, he mentioned his mother, who is nearly 90 years old. In recent years, my mother's health has become worse and worse, and her temper has become more and more weird. She insists on doing what she wants when things happen, but she insists on being unreasonable. Therefore, he couldn't do everything according to her, so he had to play rough tricks. His mother lamented that she was old and useless, and no one would listen to her!

As the saying goes, children are the enemies of their parents; when children cannot be considerate to their parents, parents are like sorghum stalks with empty hearts - drifting in the wind without a fixed point of landing, and their hearts are empty. A friend, admonishing another mother who was disappointed with her children, said, "Have you ever seen a parent who has won over his children?"

Yesterday, my brother and his second son, who is a sophomore in college, spent the night at my house. The father and son planned to get up at around 3 a.m. and set out for a seven-hour drive to pick up their eldest son, who was about to graduate from college. Before going to bed, the younger brother told his second son to go to bed early and get up early because he needed to share the work and take turns driving. As a result, my son went to bed too late while reading novels and couldn't wake up before setting off the next day. The younger brother woke him up half an hour late. Seeing how sleepy his son was, he felt annoyed that he should have woken him up half an hour later. What a great parent in the world! There is no reason to say.

A friend told me that obeying your parents’ wishes is more important than honoring them. If my father insists on giving me some pocket money, and I feel guilty and refuse to take it, it will make him angry and make me feel uncomfortable. So it is better to accept it, make him happy, and I will be happy too. He said that at our age, it is a great blessing to still have our parents around us and have the opportunity to accompany and take care of them! He wanted me to remember: obedience is more important than filial piety; old parents will never admit defeat to their children, they must win!

wall of love

Someone once mentioned that it is difficult to understand the hearts of the elderly. Sometimes the elders are polite to the younger generation, like they are reluctant to eat good food themselves and want to leave it to their children or grandchildren, so they say that they don't like to eat. The younger generation usually takes it seriously and never cares about the real meaning of their words. .

And when the elders can't control their emotions and can't help but lose their temper with the younger ones, the younger ones never want to tell: Is this situation happening because the older people have endocrine imbalance? Instead, I keep the out-of-control emotions in my heart, keep a distance from the elderly, avoid getting into trouble, or even feel discouraged and no longer care about the elderly's life. In fact, I often make this mistake myself.

The well-known writer Mr. Liu Yong once wrote an article "Returning Love", calling on everyone to be truly filial to their parents. He said:

"I think when we were children, our elders often used coercive methods to treat us, telling us what we must eat and what we were not allowed to eat! They did this because they loved and protected us! But when they grow old, they become "old children" who need to be taken care of. ’, we must imitate what they did before, using strong love!

This is not forcing, but seeing through the politeness pretended by the elderly and insisting that they accept the filial piety of the younger generation. In this way, when one day they pass away, we can reduce a lot of regrets! Because we create a fair feedback for heaven and earth, and love without resentment or regret! "

Liu Yong believes: "Young people must truly understand the physical and mental conditions of the elderly, so that regretful and heartbreaking things will not happen!" And isn't this strong love an indispensable "boundary" in interpersonal interaction? As close as parents and children, do we need to set up this wall of love?

Thinking back to the last time I had a conflict with my father, I was extremely sad. I went to ask a good friend who studied counseling for some advice. My friend said: "No, if you continue to be busy like this, you will get sick! You must learn to set boundaries. No matter what you do or when you get along with anyone, you need to set boundaries. Have you read the book "Too Much Isn't Enough" "Book? Come and have a look!"

Now I know that people do need to maintain appropriate boundaries when getting along with others. Otherwise, interpersonal relationships will produce a lot of conflicts and frictions, and life will always be busy and tiring.

When Elijah, the prophet in the Bible who sat slumped under a tree, lost all hope, didn't God say to him: "Get up, you have a long way to go"? Since the relationship with my father is lifelong and needs to be maintained for a long time, I pray that Heavenly Father will give me more wisdom and ability, and learn to communicate with my father happily, so that my original intention of accompanying and taking care of my father will not be in vain.

Author profile

He Ming loved writing work and once regarded it as his first priority in life. In recent years, I would like to take care of my old father instead.