Common Ground

by Jessica Synan

Do you feel like your parents live on another planet? Or maybe like they’re walking around in an alternate dimension and occasionally come to visit you here?

Well, here’s some news for you–they lived in a different time. A time long, long ago . . . when the Bee Gees ruled the discos and Pink Floyd refused to become “another brick in the wall.” When acid-wash jeans were cool (the first time) and when everyone wore the Top Gun Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses. Or when the ozone layer was depleted due to poofy hair in the front. Oh, yeah, and mullets (enough said).

But instead of just writing off your parents as idiots stuck in the 70s and 80s, why not try to find something to help you relate to them? Anything will do, really.

My sister is fourteen, and she really gets this. She decided that she was going to have to make an effort to relate to our dad. And believe me, it takes some effort. But dad likes baseball. Scratch that. Dad loves baseball. He actually is an umpire, and calls a lot of high-school baseball games.

So my sister started asking him if she could go with him to some of his games. She would sit in the stands while he called the games; paying close attention to all the controversial calls he made and all the angry mothers who would shout obscenities at him. On the way home from the game, they would discuss how the games went, and have really amazing conversations . . . which sometimes were not only about baseball.

This is how you need to approach your relationship with your parents. As a matter of fact, instead of finding reasons to dislike them, maybe you could try to reconcile, or bring back together, your relationship with your parents.

Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:18-19, “God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.”

There you have it. God wants us to have good relationships with people (especially our parents) because He’s in the business of reconciliation Himself. He’s bringing the world back to Him, and if you’re going to follow Him, you need to be reconciling some relationships, too.

So give peace a chance . . . well at least give peace with your parents a chance. Try something new. Do something out of the ordinary. Look for ways to find common ground with your parents and start reconciling those relationships. You won’t regret it.