Pawn Shop God
(The briefly mentioned doughnut of deception.)
I recently had a friend share an interesting book snippet. The writer pondered if an abundance of bad parenting in the last 30+ years could be a leading cause in most millennials not wanting children. I can’t say it’s the only reason (I have married/coupled friends who are happily childless for other reasons), but I don’t think the writer is entirely wrong. We tend to mold our views based on the treatment [fill-in-the-blank] establishment offered to us.
This became glaring to me in recent weeks as I’ve started to take a hard look at my prayer life. The short version of said reflections: I don’t ask God for things, I beg Him. It’s never as simple as coming, asking, and believing in faith. I’m the girl who will approach prayer, sobbing hysterically, asking for God’s attention as if the action alone were enough to be smote on the spot.
I could blame 1,000 things for this, but a big reason is that it’s the same way I asked my mom for things growing up. We were dirt poor. Any time I asked for something that was slightly above our pay grade (which was Wal-Mart on a good week and Goodwill on the rest), it resulted in a guilt trip that lasted weeks. I don’t think my mom did this intentionally. Frankly, she’s the youngest of five children and also grew up in a poor home. Likely, this was a learned behavioral pattern. Her mom made her feel bad whenever she asked for new jeans, she made me feel bad for asking for new jeans, and now I come to God, wanting metaphorical new jeans and secretly terrified I’ll never hear the end of it.
I was in the shower several nights ago—the place where I either do some of my best brainstorming or most vulnerable praying—heavily engrossed in the latter. I don’t even remember what I was praying for, I just know I was practically ending every sentence with ‘please, please, please’. Rinsing the shampoo out of my hair, I felt the twinge of conviction.
“Why do you try to barter in prayer like you’re talking to a pawn shop owner?”
Ouch.
See, I come to God prepared to beg and haggle for His goodness because I have a hard time viewing Him as a kind and merciful Father. I’m not familiar with being able to come and get a yes or no, nor am I able to bank on a yes when I get one because part of me is afraid I’m always going to have it held over my head like a loan I can’t pay back. It’s the learned behavioral pattern that now follows me even into my faith, and holy shit was that a game-changer.
I work with kids for a living, and I would love to have children of my own someday (maybe before I’m 40, Jesus? Just throwing that out there). If there is one thing I want, it’s for them to never see my kindness as something they need to pay back or make me believe they deserve. That’s not me saying I’ll never say no or that certain good behaviors can’t be rewarded; I literally bribed four-year-old with a doughnut this morning in order to get her to stop talking back to me. I’m the chief of sinners.
All I want is for them, for anyone, to be able to come to me with their need and have it met at face value.
Learned behaviors are hard to break. I stood in the shower again this evening asking God for something else, practically stomping my feet in the puddles to emphasize how serious I was. The difference is that I know now God doesn’t meet me like a pawn shop owner, waiting to see how far I can bend before He can acknowledge my need. He meets me as a dad looking at his daughter, dramatically clutching a pillow on the edge of her bed as He sits beside her and quietly asks: “How can I help?”
