A while back, I happened to see a video clip of an Oprah episode where Pastor TD Jakes was ministering to her regarding some internal issues she experienced with her mother. Pastor Jakes explained that Oprah was a ten gallon bucket person where her mother was only a five gallon bucket person. A ten gallon bucket can give more love than a five gallon bucket because it's a bigger bucket and has a higher capacity to be filled. Even if the five gallon bucket was filled to the brim, if you poured all of it into the ten gallon bucket, the ten gallon bucket would only be filled half way. What he meant by this analogy is that Oprah's mother loved her and provided for her emotional needs as a child the best she possibly could with what she had within herself. The problem was that what Oprah needed to be filled to capacity was ten gallons, not five.
When I started to learn about codependency, I eventually started to see the dysfunctional family patterns, and started adding things up to realize why I had these issues. And it wasn't just my parents. It wasn't just my grandparents. Codependency had literally saturated my family tree, so there was no way to escape it. Like the blind leading the blind.
And it's been quite the internal struggle for me because it feels worse than a loss. A loss indicates that you had something to lose. And yet I'd still categorize this feeling as grief even though what I'm grieving is something I never had in the first place, which is healthy relationships. When a loved one dies, one of the grieving processes is to find something or someone to blame. You get angry. You try to figure out what went wrong. You rationalize how the loss could have been avoided. The anger from the loss has to go somewhere and it has to be aimed at something or someone. Then came the depression phase. The enemy really had a time with me during that phase because he used it to question my worth. The Holy Spirit used it to stretch my faith muscles. Such are the ways of grief.
However, because I now understand that codependency is a generational stronghold of the enemy, it became pretty clear that there was no way for me to know exactly where or how it all began on either parental side. So, the blame game really is pointless. But, see, that's where the ten gallon bucket thing starts to make sense.
What makes codependency a generational stronghold is the fact that it is inherited. If dearly departed Grandma never owned an antique teapot with painted red roses, you're not going to inherit one from her. What gets passed down is the dysfunctional, codependent patterns of thinking and viewing the world, as well as that way of life.
With my father's side, it really was a way of life. It was considered normal, rationalized and justified, even though it was psychologically destructive. I don't doubt that my grandparents and their parents before them, and so on, did the best that they knew how to provide for their children's needs, including emotional ones. They were good, loving people that just didn't have an understanding of what healthy self-worth was... because it wasn't taught and passed down to them. And you can't give to others what you, yourself, do not have. And you also cannot pass along knowledge and wisdom that you never received.
With my mother's side, it was also a lifestyle, but one born out of alcoholism and addiction. My mother's needs were neglected all the way around as a foster child. There were abandonment issues, attachment issues, PTSD, among a laundry list of psychological effects. But at the core center of it all was codependency from never having an identity and self-worth poured into her as a child. Her biological mother's alcoholism, itself, was inherited from her father. But, again, there is really no way of knowing where it began, which ancestor was the first alcoholic to pass on the insidious disease and the creation of its victims. So, my mom could not possibly teach me about finding my identity as a child because she, herself, never really had one. It wasn't given because she grew up without her real parents being her "real" parents. What she had inherited was an orphan spirit with a very huge stronghold in codependency.
One of the lessons I've had to learn - like Pastor Jakes said in this video clip - was to let go of how I felt people should have been or should be and accept them just as they are. Accept that I am only going to get five gallons of love out of them (sometimes less) because that is literally all they have to give. I believe that our capacity to love and receive love greatly depends on our relationship with God and our spiritual maturity level. And in order to come to this acceptance, I also had to realize that their capacity to love was about them and their relationship with God, not about my worthiness to be loved.
So, how does a ten gallon bucket, like me, get filled?
And I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty. 2 Corinthians 6:18
The Lord is like a father to his children, tender and compassionate to those who fear him. Psalm 103:13
See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! But the people who belong to this world don't recognize that we are God's children because they don't know him. 1 John 3:1
I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one can snatch them away from me, for my Father has given them to me, and he is more powerful than anyone else. No one can snatch them from the Father's hand. The Father and I are one. John 10:28-30
Jesus replied, "All who love me will do what I say. My father will love them, and we will come and make our home with each of them." John 14:23
But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. Romans 5:8
God's bucket is way bigger than ten gallons. And the more I draw near to Him, I've found the more He does, indeed, draw near to me, and the more my bucket fills over with living water. No orphan spirit can stay when you come to the realization that you're wrapped in the arms of a loving, Heavenly Father.
Love in Christ and still striving to be,
Very Kimberly
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