God is our heavenly Father and He created us. If we choose not to respect and honor our parents, we will not respect and honor God, our heavenly Father. When God says we are to honor our parents, He never says to honor parents only if they are good or perfect. Obviously, no parent is perfect. That is the point. We honor our parents because they gave us life but not because we agree with everything they have done. I choose to love and honor my parents even when I do not agree with many things they do.
Even though I have honored and respected my parents my entire life, as I was taught to, recently, I have seen my own adult kids not respect or honor me. After much pain and enduring of this over the past 10 years or so, God showed me that if I do not honor HIM in my choices, my kids would find it hard to honor me. They have known me as a believer their entire lives. Over the past 10 years or so, I have literally begun a struggle with alcohol. Just wine, but wine is bad enough. Nobody ever starts drinking and plans to become an alcoholic.
One day, on my 50th birthday, my husband took me out to dinner. I drank 3 chocolate martinis and I literally was knocked out in the car on the way home. By 7pm when we returned I went straight to bed and did not wake up until the next morning.
When I woke up, I was so mad at myself! That was the beginning of my problem. It took me about 5 years to really admit I even had a problem after that evening.. After all, I was just drinking wine right? Wrong! Boy was I wrong. Then I had some serious issues with my daughter and it broke my heart to the core. The pain was so bad. I began using the wine to temporarily numb my excruciating pain.
In March of 2023, I began my journey of quitting wine drinking. I was good for almost 3 months and then gave in. 2 months later, I stopped again. Pain came around and all I wanted to do was numb it all. I repented so many times and begged God to give me the strength to walk away for good. I knew I needed His help.
After about 7 attempts, I am finally free. Do you know why? Because I know now that I need to honor my Heavenly Father. It does not look good when a believer gets drunk and falls asleep at 7pm on the couch nightly. My son saw me do this alot while he lived with us. He also saw me weeping for and praying for my relationship with my other kids and grandkids. But, the drinking was not honorable, and It truly humbled me being so weak and not a good example for my kids. After looking at it from that perspective, I was delivered because I chose to be the best of what God is calling me to be. I will now run to God when I feel pain. No more running to wine to numb me temporarily. It’s a total lie from the devil who wants us to believe that God does not care and that we will never stop. Not True and No More! God is faithful.
