All In the Family

Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation. ~ Exodus 34:7b (NIV)

The sins of the father lead to children punished?
That's not fair! I sat in court with a father today,
his juvenile son had been in the same seat before,
wasn't today. This was the day of the father.
The father who wasn't in court when the son was.
The father subpoenaed to come, but the grandmother went
so why should the father? He'd signed a piece of paper,
said she should have rights to the child. I asked just why
he should be excused. And whether his son should be,
if somebody else did the right thing but he did the wrong.
How can a child learn responsibility from a parent
who has none? ...who figures he can talk fast
and the stuff won't stick? The sins of the fathers.

Mother and Daddy raised us as well as they could.
But Mother's insecurities, her angst, are part of my heritage.
Daddy couldn't remember names, and I surely can't.
But do I have more than their characteristics?
Did decisions they made, the best they could at the time,
make my life different? If Mother hadn't taken her chubby girl,
pigtails and all, to the doctor, asked for diet pills
for the thirteen-year-old, would I have become thin,
as thin as my sisters?

We make mistakes. Sometimes we fall flat on our faces.
But if we pass our sins on, surely we often, too,
pass on concepts of good, snippets of nobility, a path to joy.
I was not made by my parents. I played a far larger role than they.
But I can be grateful for the positive and know they didn't mean
to damage me. Any more than I did my children.
It's all in the family. Thank God for the ability to rectify
the tidbits we don't want to keep.