I grew up with a father who was more likable drunk than he was sober. When he was six years old, his mother abandoned him on the doorstep of an aunt. His own dad (my grandfather) had died of black lung in the coal mines of West Virginia, and I can only assume that his mom was too poor to raise him. Unfortunately, so was his aunt.<\/p>\n
My dad was passed from home to home, and wound up living with a Baptist preacher who beat him. Eventually, he escaped by way of the Marine Corps, and became a helicopter gunner in Vietnam. After being wounded, he returned to the US, where he met and married my mom.<\/p>\n
In some ways, I\u2019m very grateful for my father because he pulled us out of poverty. He was a successful businessman, and because of his provision, I didn\u2019t have to grow up in a shack in West Virginia like he did. But he was also a man haunted by the trauma of his past, and he brought a lot of that wickedness with him.<\/p>\n
I grew up in a violent, scary environment, where running and hiding were instinctive from childhood. I never knew which dad I would encounter \u2013 the angry, abusive dad who smacked me around; or the drunken, mellow dad who left me alone. I believe the first step out of dysfunction is to become aware of generational patterns in your life. Christians sometimes get weirded out by the language of \u201cgenerational sin\u201d because they view it like a curse, but really the \u201csins of the parents\u201d are all about modeling.<\/p>\n Modeling is a type of learning, where you pick up by extension the behaviors of someone around you. So, people carry anger from one generation to the next, not because they\u2019re cursed, but because it\u2019s the only coping pattern they\u2019ve ever seen. In essence, they\u2019ve learned a single stress strategy, which says, \u201cThis is how you\u2019re supposed to adapt to the world.\u201d<\/p>\n But here\u2019s the beautiful truth: If all your behavior is the result of previous learning, then you can learn something new, and that will change you, too. <\/strong>Romans 12:2 urges us to be transformed by the renewal of our minds. In other words, we don\u2019t have to be enslaved to generational patterns; we can be transformed through learning something new, literally \u201crenewing\u201d our minds. This is why I love to tell people, \u201cYou are not who you are. You are who you are becoming.\u201d<\/p>\n How do you become someone with a renewed mind? At some point, you have to choose to trust God as Father. It can be challenging to get onboard with a father figure when all you\u2019ve had is a negative one. But for me, there was a sense in which it was actually easier. As I learned about \u201cour Father in heaven,\u201d He was such a contrast to my father on earth. Instead of being destructive and hurtful, He was beautiful and good.<\/p>\n He was everything I\u2019d ever longed for, and He became the first Person I truly trusted in my life.<\/p>\n If all your behavior is the result of previous learning, then you can learn something new, and that will change you, too. <\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Trusting God paves the way for trusting others, and it will enable you to find clarity on who you want to be down the road. Around the time I was 18, God gave me new role models. I would watch these men at church, who were so kind and gentle with their wives, and think, \u201cHow can I be like that?\u201d<\/p>\n A word of wisdom here \u2013 as you think about who you want to be down the road, curate cautiously the people who are in your inner circle. It\u2019s no secret that wounded people are drawn to wounded people, which perpetuates unhealthy generational patterns. To forge a new legacy, we must recognize that the people around us will eventually become the voices inside us.<\/p>\n Choose those people wisely, and then begin modeling new behavior. That\u2019s exactly what I did. I figured that if these godly men had what I wanted, I would mimic them. Now I\u2019ll be honest, imitating someone else feels foreign at first \u2013 fake even. There\u2019s a psychological concept called \u201cimposter syndrome,\u201d which is the sensation that deep down you\u2019re a fraud. I think it\u2019s normal to have a sense of imposter syndrome when you first start modeling the lifestyle of a mature believer. You\u2019ll catch yourself thinking things like, \u201cThis isn\u2019t really me.\u201d<\/p>\n But that\u2019s the whole point \u2013 we don\u2019t want to be \u201cus\u201d because \u201cus\u201d is broken, and we want to blaze a new trail for generations to come. This is what the apostle Paul means when he says, \u201cFollow me as I follow Christ\u201d (I Corinthians 11:1). He\u2019s literally saying, \u201cImitate me. Do what I do.\u201d<\/p>\n In tandem with modeling new behavior, learn to be suspicious about your strongly held beliefs. When you grow up in an unhealthy environment, dysfunctions become normal. You can find yourself weirdly happy in conflict or stress because it\u2019s all that you know. For that reason, it\u2019s healthy to say, \u201cI\u2019m going to be at least a little suspicious of the things I hold to be of absolute importance, unless they are central to the gospel itself.\u201d<\/p>\n This is the attitude of any person whose posture is to learn, to change, and to grow. Recently, my son Connor was talking about his grandfather and \u201cAdkins anger,\u201d and he said, \u201cI\u2019m so glad that one day my kids will have you for a grandfather.\u201d You are not who you are. You are who you are becoming.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I grew up with a father who was more likable drunk than he was sober. When he was six years old, his mother abandoned him on the doorstep of an…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":106025,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-95238","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-christian-life"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\nPeople sometimes ask me how I turned my story around. It\u2019s a great question: How do you overcome the sins of the parent? How do you build a new legacy?<\/em><\/p>\n
\nFinally, lead your family to understand the sins of the parent. I\u2019ve sat down with each of my children and told them my story. We\u2019ve talked about \u201cAdkins anger.\u201d I\u2019ve said, \u201cHey, you might have unusually angry responses to things in your life, and you\u2019ll have to watch out for that because that\u2019s been passed down through our family for generations.\u201d I have these conversations because I want to equip my children. I want to write a more beautiful story for them.<\/p>\n
\nLet me tell you \u2013 if God could take an angry, rebellious kid like me, with a broken, messed up past, and turn my whole story around, He can turn yours around, too.<\/p>\n