Are the "Sins of the Father" a Curse?

Anne Lamott is my literary soul mate. She writes in the same style and tone that I do, and her work tends to contain the same level of self-deprecating, sarcastic cynicism as mine does. Or at least, I’d like to think so. Therefore, it goes without saying that I’ve taken a lot of the advice in her book on writing, “Bird by Bird” to heart. Which means that I have spent quite a lot of time recently thinking and writing about my family.

To be a writer, you have to not only think that you are interesting enough that people would care to hear what you have to say, but also delusional enough to believe that people would pay money to read your work. In a word, you have be be a cocky crazy person. I am without a doubt a writer.

The common knowledge on writing is that an author should, “write what they know.” So I write a lot about faith, fat, and family. And cheese. In the past year I have also discovered something new to write about – relationships – after ending nearly half a decade of singleness. Relationships are hard, and loving someone the way that Jesus would love them is about as natural to me as eating nothing but kale for a day (ie, not natural.)

Sometimes when my boyfriend is forgetful, clumsy, inattentive, and other qualities that remind me of my dad, I think about that old wives warning, that, “all women are destined to marry men like their fathers.” Creepiness and reverse Oedipal complex issues aside, there is a lot of truth to this in my relationship. Both my boyfriend and my father are sensitive, loving, caring men who sometimes struggle to communicate their feelings effectively and are physically incapable of putting clothes into hampers. While those seem like general enough qualities that men have, what is not so common is the fact that both my boyfriend and my father have mothers that are very protective and controlling. Both myself and my mother have had difficulty being accepted by mother-in-law and mother-in-not-yet-law, and dealt with relationship drama as a result. It wasn’t until a recent talk with my Grandmother that I realized that she too was not accepted by her MIL, and was married to a man whose mother just couldn’t let go. This concerned me.

How could I have known when I met my boyfriend and decided to pursue a relationship with him, that he would have a type of relationship with his mother that previous matriarchs in my family had endured? Was this chance? Fate? Or was it something scarier – like a curse? As a Christian, I don’t believe in things like, “luck”, “chance”, or “Harry Potter” (just kidding I LOVE Harry Potter, go Gryffindors!) I do believe in the Bible though, which states clearly in the book Exodus that God punishes those He loves for the sins of their fathers. Suddenly I was reminded of the time when I went to a sister church’s “generational healing” service, where we were told to write down every sin of every family member we knew of, and then burn the paper to “cleans the sins.” I had angrily dismissed this as extra-Biblical manipulative nonsense and stormed out, clip art family tree in hand. Was I wrong? Had my great-great-great-great grandmother lied on her tax return form and cursed all future women in the family to suffer through, “he’ll always be my baby”’s for the rest of time? If you take the verse literally, the answer would be no, since it says nothing about sins of the mother, but that probably wasn’t God’s point.

Emotional hyperbole over with, I started to meditate on the truths about God I knew and held onto. That He loved me. That nothing I could ever do would separate me from His love. That He has plans for my life and a purpose for my being on this Earth. That He will always be in control, even if it’s hard for me to understand why He’s doing the things He’s doing. And also, that He likes to party, and when I get to meet Him in heaven we’ll probably enjoy some kick-ass wine. I realized that I was focusing far too much on the first part of the verse, the “punishing” part, and not enough on the second part, the “loving.” I might not ever understand what that verse, or the hundreds of others just as confusing as it in the Bible mean, but I will always know that my God loves me, and is not sitting up in Heaven plotting out ways to exact revenge on me. Even if it feels that way over Thanksgiving dinner.