The body it crumbles, grace and vigor depart;

There is now a stone where I once had a heart.

But inside this old carcass a young girl still dwells,

And now and again my battered heart swells.

I remember the joys, and I remember the pain;

And I am loving and living life over again.

I think of the years all too few -- gone too fast,

And accept the stark fact that nothing can last.

So open your eyes, nurses, open and see

Not a crabby old woman; look closer -- see me.

Broken relationship takes its toll. I remember that wedding, how beautiful it was. The bride and groom had dated through college, planned carefully for their wedding. It was a glorious evening. The reception was filled with laughter and celebration -- that is, except for the mother and father of the bride. Their rebel son had during that evening flung epithets in their faces, taking off to elope with his mid-teen sweetheart. This seemed designed to punish his parents and to break his mother's heart in her greatest moment of joy.

A few weeks ago I preached through the Ten Commandments. The fifth reads, "Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you" (Exodus 20:12). I tried to open up that important instruction from God in a way that is faithful to Scripture and honest to our contemporary existence. I knew that the notion of one honoring one's parents, some of whom hadn't been very good parents, would be troubling to a few present that morning.

Little did I expect the intensity of a three-page letter, single spaced, and typed on 8 1/2" x 11" size stationery by a woman who had been there that morning. She told of being the daughter of a man who sexually molested her older sister to the point that after four years she ended up having his baby. She described many overheard, middle-of-the-night conversations between her father and mother, one of which ended with repentance. But the pattern started all over again.

As sad as this story is, it is even more complicated by the fact that her father was a missionary, pastor, and more recently teacher in a Christian school. She writes, "Unable to reconcile the differing pictures of my father, the missionary/minister with his arms raised to God before his congregation in the morning and my father sleeping with his daughter during the nights, I placed the painful memories deep within my subconscious mind."

She writes on, describing how these painful memories came back to haunt her as she established her own marriage and later went through a tragic divorce. In later personal conversation with me, she described her own feelings about her mother who knew the facts but entered into an enabling collusion with her father which led to coverup and continued practice.

She described how she has had to get a court restraining order for the safety of her children, keeping her father from seeing her children, and how resentful her mother is toward her for this behavior. Then, in devastating honesty, she looked me in the eyes and asked, "Do you mean I have to honor these two people who have allowed such pain for me and the rest of my family?"