My daughter is my favorite girl in the whole wide world! I tell her that all the time and she lights up whenever I say it. True to her name she is an expression of God’s grace to me. She is all about her momma and tells me she loves me spontaneously and often.
The thing is, before I conceived her I would have never imagined her as such a blessing. That sentiment was never communicated to me by my mom. We’ve always been cordial but not close; a painful reality as a child, yet eventually accepted as the norm. With time, I realized that my mother’s hesitance in sharing about her childhood, and in particular her relationship with my grandmother meant emotional disconnect was a pattern passing down that family tree. Naturally I assumed if I had a daughter I would not be close to her, if for no other reason than the inability to give what I hadn’t received. Top it off with erroneous teaching about generational curses; the prospect of a healthy mother-daughter relationship seemed completely hopeless!
Recently, my mom, with a sort of quiet awe, commented on my closeness to my daughter. I smiled in agreement and wondered what I often wondered…how did this happen? It certainly wasn’t because I’m such a good mother. Nevertheless, we’ve been close from day one and yet, from time to time, I have feared that I would wake up from the dream to a reality of distance.
I’m thankful for a sermon by Joseph Prince. He shared that though it’s true that under the old covenant children suffered the repercussions of their ancestors’ sins (Exodus 20:5, Jeremiah 31:29-34); under the new covenant, believers are new creations and free from every curse, including generational curses (2 Corinthians 5:17). Unbelievers can suffer under generational curses, but those in Christ Jesus cannot. Jesus drank sour wine on the cross before declaring “it is finished” so believers wouldn’t eat the sour grapes of our ancestors’ failures (John 19:28-30).
I don’t know how far back dysfunctional mother-daughter relationships go in my mom’s family or how it started but I know it stops here. What Jesus did for me on the cross took care of the relational curse that hung over my head. That truth tossed out my fears, leaving only peace. By God’s grace, I freely enjoy a great relationship with my daughter without looking over my shoulder!
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