Inconsistent Father Quotes

Apologizing to me again, thought Miles miserably. For me. He keeps telling me I'm all right—and then apologizing. Inconsistent, Father.He shuffled back and forth across the room again, and his pain burst into speech. He flung his words against the deaf door, "I'll make you take back that apology! I am all right, damn it! I'll make you see it. I'll stuff you so full of pride in me there'll be no room left for your precious guilt! I swear by my word as Vorkosigan. I swear it, Father," his voice fell to a whisper, "Grandfather. Somehow, I don't know how . . .

CONSORTING WITH ANGELS I was tired of being a woman, tired of the spoons and the pots, tired of my mouth and my breasts, tired of the cosmetics and the silks. There were still men who sat at my table, circled around the bowl I offered up. The bowl was filled with purple grapes and the flies hovered in for the scent and even my father came with his white bone. But I was tired of the gender of things. Last night I had a dream and I said to it . . . "You are the answer. You will outlive my husband and my father." In that dream there was a city made of chains where Joan was put to death in man's clothes and the nature of the angels went unexplained, no two made in the same species, one with a nose, one with an ear in its hand, one chewing a star and recording its orbit, each one like a poem obeying itself, performing God's functions, a people apart. "You are the answer," I said, and entered, lying down on the gates of the city. Then the chains were fastened around me and I lost my common gender and my final aspect. Adam was on the left of me and Eve was on the right of me, both thoroughly inconsistent with the world of reason. We wove our arms together and rode under the sun. I was not a woman anymore, not one thing or the other. 0 daughters of Jerusalem, the king has brought me into his chamber. I am black and I am beautiful. I've been opened and undressed. I have no arms or legs. I'm all one skin like a fish. I'm no more a woman than Christ was a man.

And I have to admit to myself that although I have plenty of sound reasons for not being a father—I know I would also be inconsistent and moody, alternately smothering and neglectful, plus I will never, ever be able to afford riding lessons or braces, let alone college—one of the reasons I don’t want children is fear. I’m afraid that if I ever did have children of my own I would love them so painfully it would rip my soul in half, that I would never again have a waking moment free from the terror that something bad might ever happen to them.

From early childhood he had experienced the wish to die, to commit suicide, as they say, but never was totally concentrated. He could never come to terms with being born into a world that basically repulsed him in every detail from the very beginning. He grew older and thought that his wish to die would suddenly no longer be there, but this wish grew more intense from year to year, without ever becoming totally intense and concentrated. My constant curiosity got in the way of my suicide, so he said, I thought. We never forgive our fathers for having sired us, nor our mothers for having brought us into the world, he said, nor our sisters for continuing to be witnesses to our unhappiness. To exist means nothing other than we despair, he said. When I go to bed I have no other wise than to die, never to wake up, but then I wake up again and the awful process repeats itself, finally repeats itself for fifty years, he said. To think that for fifty years we don't wish for anything other than to be dead and are still alive and can't change it because we are thoroughly inconsistent, so he said. Because we are wretched, vile creatures. No musical ability! he cried out, no life ability!

It has been charged that this doctrine represents the Son as winning over the incensed Father to clemency and love, a supposition wholly inconsistent with the fact that the love of God is the very fount from which the atonement springs.

An effective tsar could be harsh provided he was consistently harsh. Rulers are often killed not for brutality but for inconsistency. And tsars had to inspire trust and respect among their courtiers but sacred reverence among the peasantry, 90 per cent of their subjects, who saw them as “Little Fathers.” They were expected to be severe to their officials but benign to their peasant “children”: “the tsar is good,” peasants said, “the nobles are wicked.

There is one only living and true God, without body, parts, or passions; consisting of three persons—the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.” It is painful to the human mind to be compelled to admit, that such wonderful inconsistencies of language or ideas, have ever found place in any human creed. Yet, so it is.

Of this fickle temper he gave a memorable example in Ireland, when sent thither by his father, Henry the Second, with the purpose of buying golden opinions of the inhabitants of that new and important acquisition to the English crown. Upon this occasion the Irish chieftains contended which should first offer to the young Prince their loyal homage and the kiss of peace. But, instead of receiving their salutations with courtesy, John and his petulant attendants could not resist the temptation of pulling the long beards of the Irish chieftains; a conduct which, as might have been expected, was highly resented by these insulted dignitaries, and produced fatal consequences to the English domination in Ireland. It is necessary to keep these inconsistencies of John’s character in view, that the reader may understand his conduct during the present evening.

But ought we to give him up? 'I should say, certainly not.' Then I fear that I must lay hands on my father Parmenides; but do not call me a parricide; for there is no way out of the difficulty except to show that in some sense not-being is; and if this is not admitted, no one can speak of falsehood, or false opinion, or imitation, without falling into a contradiction. You observe how unwilling I am to undertake the task; for I know that I am exposing myself to the charge of inconsistency in asserting the being of not-being. But if I am to make the attempt, I think that I had better begin at the beginning.

Covert narcissists change their attitude depending on who they want to project their image to. My father was at work all day and my mother was showing us what a good mother she was with food, but she easily changed her behaviour to target my father, not caring at all about the inconsistency in her behaviour.

Few things exasperate a child more than inconsistency. Pity the horse that has a rider who gives it mixed signals, digging his heels into its side and pulling the reins at the same time. Even more, pity the child who has the rules changed by a capricious father, and who is always exasperated because of the conflicting messages he receives.

What you describe is parasitism, not love. When you require another individual for your survival, you are a parasite on that individual. There is no choice, no freedom involved in your relationship. It is a matter of necessity rather than love. Love is the free exercise of choice. Two people love each other only when they are quite capable of living without each other but choose to live with each other. We all-each and every one of us-even if we try to pretend to others and to ourselves that we don't have dependency needs and feelings, all of us have desires to be babied, to be nurtured without effort on our parts, to be cared for by persons stronger than us who have our interests truly at heart. No matter how strong we are, no matter how caring and responsible and adult, if we look clearly into ourselves we will find the wish to be taken care of for a change. Each one of us, no matter how old and mature, looks for and would like to have in his or her life a satisfying mother figure and father figure. But for most of us these desires or feelings do not rule our lives; they are not the predominant theme of our existence. When they do rule our lives and dictate the quality of our existence, then we have something more than just dependency needs or feelings; we are dependent. Specifically, one whose life is ruled and dictated by dependency needs suffers from a psychiatric disorder to which we ascribe the diagnostic name "passive dependent personality disorder." It is perhaps the most common of all psychiatric disorders. People with this disorder, passive dependent people, are so busy seeking to be loved that they have no energy left to love…..This rapid changeability is characteristic of passive dependent individuals. It is as if it does not matter whom they are dependent upon as long as there is just someone. It does not matter what their identity is as long as there is someone to give it to them. Consequently their relationships, although seemingly dramatic in their intensity, are actually extremely shallow. Because of the strength of their sense of inner emptiness and the hunger to fill it, passive dependent people will brook no delay in gratifying their need for others. If being loved is your goal, you will fail to achieve it. The only way to be assured of being loved is to be a person worthy of love, and you cannot be a person worthy of love when your primary goal in life is to passively be loved. Passive dependency has its genesis in lack of love. The inner feeling of emptiness from which passive dependent people suffer is the direct result of their parents' failure to fulfill their needs for affection, attention and care during their childhood. It was mentioned in the first section that children who are loved and cared for with relative consistency throughout childhood enter adulthood with a deep seated feeling that they are lovable and valuable and therefore will be loved and cared for as long as they remain true to themselves. Children growing up in an atmosphere in which love and care are lacking or given with gross inconsistency enter adulthood with no such sense of inner security. Rather, they have an inner sense of insecurity, a feeling of "I don't have enough" and a sense that the world is unpredictable and ungiving, as well as a sense of themselves as being questionably lovable and valuable. It is no wonder, then, that they feel the need to scramble for love, care and attention wherever they can find it, and once having found it, cling to it with a desperation that leads them to unloving, manipulative, Machiavellian behavior that destroys the very relationships they seek to preserve. In summary, dependency may appear to be love because it is a force that causes people to fiercely attach themselves to one another. But in actuality it is not love; it is a form of antilove. Ultimately it destroys rather than builds relationships, and it destroys rather than builds people.

Pham Nuwen spent years learning to program/explore. Programming went back to the beginning of time. It was a little like the midden out back of his father’s castle. Where the creek had worn that away, ten meters down, there were the crumpled hulks of machines—flying machines, the peasants said—from the great days of Canberra’s original colonial era. But the castle midden was clean and fresh compared to what lay within the Reprise’s local net. There were programs here that had been written five thousand years ago, before Humankind ever left Earth. The wonder of it—the horror of it, Sura said—was that unlike the useless wrecks of Canberra’s past, these programs still worked! And via a million million circuitous threads of inheritance, many of the oldest programs still ran in the bowels of the Qeng Ho system. Take the Traders’ method of timekeeping. The frame corrections were incredibly complex—and down at the very bottom of it was a little program that ran a counter. Second by second, the Qeng Ho counted from the instant that a human had first set foot on Old Earth’s moon. But if you looked at it still more closely. . .the starting instant was actually some hundred million seconds later, the 0-second of one of Humankind’s first computer operating systems. So behind all the top-level interfaces was layer under layer of support. Some of that software had been designed for wildly different situations. Every so often, the inconsistencies caused fatal accidents. Despite the romance of spaceflight, the most common accidents were simply caused by ancient, misused programs finally getting their revenge. “We should rewrite it all,” said Pham. “It’s been done,” said Sura, not looking up. She was preparing to go off-Watch, and had spent the last four days trying to root a problem out of the coldsleep automation. “It’s been tried,” corrected Bret, just back from the freezers. “But even the top levels of fleet system code are enormous. You and a thousand of your friends would have to work for a century or so to reproduce it.” Trinli grinned evilly. “And guess what—even if you did, by the time you finished, you’d have your own set of inconsistencies. And you still wouldn’t be consistent with all the applications that might be needed now and then.” Sura gave up on her debugging for the moment. “The word for all this is ‘mature programming environment.’ Basically, when hardware performance has been pushed to its final limit, and programmers have had several centuries to code, you reach a point where there is far more signicant code than can be rationalized. The best you can do is understand the overall layering, and know how to search for the oddball tool that may come in handy—take the situation I have here.” She waved at the dependency chart she had been working on. “We are low on working fluid for the coffins. Like a million other things, there was none for sale on dear old Canberra. Well, the obvious thing is to move the coffins near the aft hull, and cool by direct radiation. We don’t have the proper equipment to support this—so lately, I’ve been doing my share of archeology. It seems that five hundred years ago, a similar thing happened after an in-system war at Torma. They hacked together a temperature maintenance package that is precisely what we need.” “Almost precisely.

Iris is supposed to be going to secretarial school to learn to have a useful career for the years before she gets married. But letters have been coming from the secretarial school saying she's been 'consistently absent and has not been attending'. Tautology, Iris said when the one saying those things came. Another came today. When father waved it over the dinner table at Iris, Iris took it, read it, pointed out first a mistake in spelling and then an inconsistency in marginal spacing, both of which proved, she said, that she knew more than they knew at secretarial college and therefore no longer needed attend.

You, then, are very much at play in the Kingdom, like a child in a sandbox. And each event that arises for you need not be judged. I have shared with you many times that it is the egoic mind that compares and contrasts. Therefore, never compare or contrast your experience with another person’s. Yours is unique. And though the world would say, perhaps, that your experience is not as valuable because you are only worth twenty thousand dollars and somebody else is worth four hundred million, therefore, they have manifested more powerfully, that is simply not true. For manifestation is simply the expression that reveals where the mind has been focusing. The real power is the very mystery that anything can be manifested at all. And you are free to constantly choose anew. Cultivate, then, a very childlike attitude toward all of your experience. Learn to ponder it, to wonder about it, to look upon it like a father does to a child, like your Father does to you: Behold, I have created all things and it is good! In your Bible in the creation story that is told there, it is said that God said something like that. For God looked upon all that She had created and said, “Behold, it is very good!” You are the father of your creations. You are the father of your thoughts, your attitudes, and your choices. Look upon all of these things and say, “Behold, it is very good.” For goodness begets goodness. Judgment begets judgment. For nothing can produce except that which is like itself. An acorn cannot produce a fish. A man and a woman cannot produce an acorn. The thoughts you hold about yourself will reproduce themselves. When you look upon all things as good, goodness will be begotten from that decision. Each time, then, that you have chosen to hold a negative thought about yourself, or about anyone, you have only insured the kind of inconsistency in your mind that interrupts the power of your ability to create, more and more, as a living embodied master. This can only be because you have held deep within the mind some belief that says, “No matter what I do, it won’t work out.” There is some conflicted belief. A belief in goodness and a belief in evil create a conflict that must entrap the soul.

Ultimately, we have to know the heart of the Father based on what we see in the Son, not by shadowy Old Testament passages that, on the surface, seem to show us a different version. Only Christ is the “exact representation” of His Father’s nature and the “visible image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15, NLT). We have, what Paul calls “a better word than the blood of Abel” (Heb. 12:24). You will fry your brain trying to patch up the apparent inconsistencies between God’s two résumés in the Old and New Testaments. So theologize all you want … at the end of the day, I would recommend you just give up and look at Jesus. All of the Father’s loving plan for humanity is wrapped up in Him – the Author and Finisher of our faith.

The first overt clerical attack took place in December 1614. Standing in the pulpit of the Dominican Church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, Father Thomas Caccini delivered a sermon that denounced mathematics as inconsistent with the Bible and detrimental to the State.

We have seen that the early church fathers didn’t have clarity on justification by faith alone. At the same time, they didn’t blatantly deny the truth as Trent did. It is one thing to be fuzzy or inconsistent regarding a truth in the Scriptures, but it is quite another thing to explicitly deny it altogether. Neuhaus

The pragmatic mood is already visible in the Odyssey. The poem opens with Odysseus living on a remote island ruled by a nymph who offers him immortality if he will remain as her consort. A bit surprisingly to anyone steeped in the orthodox Western religio-philosophical-scientific tradition, he refuses, preferring mortality and a dangerous struggle to regain his position as the king of a small, rocky island and be reunited with his son, aging wife, and old father. He turns down what the orthodox tradition says we should desire above all else, the peace that comes from overcoming the transience and vicissitudes of mortality, whether that peace takes the form of personal immortality or of communing with eternal verities, moral or scientific—in either case ushering us to the still point of the turning world. Odysseus prefers going to arriving, struggle to rest, exploring to achieving—curiosity is one of his most marked traits—and risk to certainty. The Odyssey situates Calypso’s enchanted isle in the far west, the land of the setting sun, and describes the isle in images redolent of death. In contrast, Odysseus’s arrival at his own island, far to the east, a land of the rising sun, is depicted in imagery suggestive of rebirth. Another thing that is odd about the protagonist, and the implicit values, of the Odyssey from the orthodox standpoint is that Odysseus is not a conventional hero, the kind depicted in the Iliad. He is strong, brave, and skillful in fighting, but he is no Achilles (who had a divine mother) or even Ajax; and he relies on guile, trickery, and outright deception to a degree inconsistent with what we have come to think of as heroism or with its depiction in the Iliad. His dominant trait is skill in coping with his environment rather than ability to impose himself upon it by brute force. He is the most intelligent person in the Odyssey but his intelligence is thoroughly practical, adaptive. Unlike Achilles in the Iliad, who is given to reflection, notably about the heroic ethic itself, Odysseus is pragmatic. He is an instrumental reasoner rather than a speculative one. He is also, it is true, distinctly pious, a trait that the Odyssey harps on and modern readers tend to overlook. But piety in Homeric religion is a coping mechanism. Homeric religion is proto-scientific; it is an attempt to understand and control the natural world. The gods personify nature and men manipulate it by “using” the gods in the proper way. One sacrifices to them in order to purchase their intervention in one’s affairs—this is religion as magic, the ancestor of modern technology—and also to obtain clues to what is going to happen next; this is the predictive use of religion and corresponds to modern science. The gods’ own rivalries, mirroring (in Homeric thought, personifying or causing) the violent clash of the forces of nature, prevent human beings from perfecting their control over the environment. By the same token, these rivalries underscore the dynamic and competitive character of human existence and the unrealism of supposing that peace and permanence, a safe and static life, are man’s lot. Odysseus’s piety has nothing to do with loving God as creator or redeemer, or as the name, site, metaphysical underwriter, or repository of the eternal or the unchanging, or of absolutes (such as omniscience and omnipotence) and universals (numbers, words, concepts). Odysseus’s piety is pragmatic because his religion is naturalistic—is simply the most efficacious means known to his society for controlling the environment, just as science and technology are the most efficacious means by which modern people control their environment.

There is a different practice of devotion for the gentleman and the mechanic; for the prince and the servant; for the wife, the maiden, and the widow; and still further, the practice of devotion must be adapted to the capabilities, the engagements, and the duties of each individual. It would not do were the bishop to adopt a Carthusian solitude, or if the father of a family refused like the Capuchins to save money. . . . Such devotion would be inconsistent and ridiculous. . . . It is not merely an error but a heresy to suppose that a devout life is necessarily banished from the soldier’s camp, the merchant’s shop, the prince’s court, or the domestic hearth. . . . Lot remained chaste whilst in Sodom, and fell into sin after he had forsaken it. Wheresoever we may be, we may and should aim at a life of perfect devotion.

Et ne nos inducas in tentationem." Why should an all-loving father lead his child into temptation? Why must he be implored not to? At that moment in Ursula's drafty chamber, Celia renounced God. She would cease to worry about religion. She would conform to any outward acts which seemed expedient at the time, and she would guide her own life as she saw fit. Her own will and desires should be her sole criteria. All else was inconsistency or downright lies. And nothing was worth suffering for.

Thank you, and thank you for being a constant in me and my baby girl’s life. No matter how inconsistent my dating life is, or how distant my father and brother are with her, you’ve always been the one man I could count on to be there for her. I’ll forever be grateful for that.

While egalitarian positions had been advocated since the 1950s by theologically liberal Protestant writers, no evangelical books took such a position until 1974. In that year freelance writers Letha Scanzoni and Nancy Hardesty published their groundbreaking book All We’re Meant to Be.1 The following year, Paul Jewett, then a professor at Fuller Seminary, published Man as Male and Female.2 Both books claimed that the apostle Paul’s advocacy of female subordination in marriage and the church was a remnant of his rabbinic training that he had not fully resolved when he wrote his epistles, and that this particular rabbinic element was inconsistent with Paul’s other emphasis on total equality for men and women in Christ. In fact, though Scanzoni and Hardesty’s book was published earlier, they actually depended on Jewett’s class notes from Fuller Seminary for their key argument that Paul was wrong on this issue.3 Jewett therefore may be considered the intellectual father of the modern evangelical feminist movement.

Our approach to God is conditioned by our concept of Him, whether accurate or distorted. ~Graham Kendrick Whether we realize it or not, many of us attribute negative human characteristics to God, our Heavenly Father.  We confess 1 John 4:8 that tells us that God is Love, but do we really believe it? We know human love, and we expect it may disappoint us because it is often inconsistent and conditional.  God’s love, on the other hand, is unchanging and unconditional.  He is good all the time.  His love never changes.  He does not stop caring.  His mercies never end. He is always on our side.  There is nothing we can do that can change His love for us or make Him stop loving and caring for us. If we really believe the truth about God and renounce all the lies about Him, we will be filled with indescribable peace.  We will be aware of His abiding presence and know that He is always with us.  We will be able to trust in His faithfulness. We will feel secure in His love.  We will know that we are valuable and accepted by Him.  We will live life with purpose and true joy. 

Turning off the machines is a technicality. Her mind is already gone. Her spirit lingers, but it's tied to her bed because we are. If we want it free, we have to do this for her.” Molly heard an echo of her father and saw no inconsistency. Yes, Robin's soul was in heaven. Her spirit, though, was different. It was the part of her that lived on in everyone she left behind. In that regard, what Kathryn said made sense.

Compare the following Synoptic (see Synoptic Gospels) accounts of Jesus’ command to his seventy missionaries. • “Take . . . no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff; for laborers deserve their food” (Matt. 10:9–10). • “Take nothing for [your] journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in [your] belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics” (Mark 6:8–9). • “Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money—not even an extra tunic” (Luke 9:3). The three accounts obviously do not completely agree. Did Jesus say to take a staff, as Mark reports, or not to take a staff, as Matthew and Luke report? Did Jesus say to wear sandals, as Mark’s account says, or not to wear sandals, as Matthew’s account suggests? Such disagreements clearly do not affect the basic teaching all three accounts seek to relay—namely, that disciples were to trust God the Father, not their own provisions, as they carried out the work of expanding God’s kingdom. But just as clearly, the three accounts do disagree and thus cannot in any literal sense be labeled “inerrant.” As a matter of fact, minor inconsistencies such as these occur throughout the Bible. Sometimes they can be explained away; other times they cannot. Even when they cannot be explained, however, they never affect anything important. Minor contradictions in the Bible become a concern only when someone embraces a theory of inspiration that stipulates that such contradictions should not occur—namely, that the Bible is inerrant. If we focus our attention on the infallible teaching of Scripture on matters of faith and practice, however, rather than on whether the Bible is meticulously accurate and consistent in matters of history or science, we are free to see that these inconsistencies and scientific or historical inaccuracies are irrelevant to our faith. Supporting

MATTHEW 16:23 The Lord recognized that Satan was speaking through Peter. This wasn’t something coming from God. Jesus knew it was inconsistent with what the Father had clearly revealed to Him of His will. So even though Peter had previously spoken forth a glorious revelation by the Holy Spirit, Christ knew that the inspiration for this rebuke was from hell.

Calling yourself a Christian doesn't make you one, living like Christ does. Faith without works is dead, and a lifestyle that contradicts the teachings of Jesus can't be reconciled with a true Christian faith." Or, as Jesus said, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 7:21). It's important to remember that being a Christian is not just about identifying with the label, but about living a life that reflects the teachings and values of Jesus Christ. If you're struggling with inconsistencies in your faith and lifestyle, consider seeking guidance from a spiritual mentor or counselor- Holy Spirit who can help you work through these issues and grow in your faith.

Revelation—the often miraculous accounts of God’s interventions in history—is crucial, but for Locke revelation cannot trump reason: “Nothing that is contrary to, and inconsistent with, the clear and self-evident dictates of reason has a right to be urged or assented to as a matter of faith.

special acknowledgments 1. my sun & rain, who believed i could write this even when i didn't. 1. my father, who probably didn't know i was a writer but will hopefully be proud of me for writing this. 1. my sister-savior, who wouldn't imagine giving up on me even in the darkest of times. 1. the rest of my family, who always encouraged me to keep moving forward even if it meant pushing me out of my comfort zone. 1. my beta readers (christine, mira, danika, shauna, rob, mason & lauren), who cried while reading this & — most importantly — pointed out my inconsistencies & corrected most of my grammar mistakes.

the renewal of creation has been wrought by the Self-same Word Who made it in the beginning. There is thus no inconsistency between creation and salvation; for the One Father has employed the same Agent for both works, effecting the salvation of the world through the same Word Who made it in the beginning.

Communion with the Father is wholly inconsistent with loose walking. “If

But the penal system is rife with inconsistencies. Someone can be put away on a drug charge and spend as long as your father did behind bars. Others can rape and murder and get less than ten years.

We will begin, then, with the creation of the world and with God its Maker, for the first fact that you must grasp is this: the renewal of creation has been wrought by the Self-same Word Who made it in the beginning. There is thus no inconsistency between creation and salvation for the One Father has employed the same Agent for both works, effecting the salvation of the world through the same Word Who made it in the beginning.

The first thing you need to understand is that the world's renewal was accomplished by the very same Word that created it in the first place. So, there's no inconsistency between creation and salvation, because the same Father used the same Agent for both tasks. He brought about the world's salvation through the same Word that originally created it.

We will begin then with the creation of the world with God its Maker, for the first fact that you must grasp is this: The renewal of Creation has been wrought by the Self-Same Word who made it in the beginning. There is thus no inconsistency between creation and salvation for the One Father has employed the same Agent for both works affecting the salvation of the world through the same Word who made it in the beginning.

The child who grows into an Anxious attachment style has one or more parents who are present and loving one moment, and then absent or unavailable the next. Consequently, they can trust and deeply connect with their parents and then feel a strong emotional hunger when they disappear. As Live Science discusses, connection with caregivers releases oxytocin, among other neurochemicals, in the brain. Immediate withdrawal then creates a more significant sense of longing and a deeper dependency on their parent or parents to be soothed. However, the child will not actually have enough distance to learn how to self-soothe, so they will feel an even deeper need to rely on their caregivers. Consequently, a subconscious program that revolves around the fear of abandonment begins to be ingrained in the Anxiously attached individual. They will begin to get deeply triggered when the caregiver separates from them and will often feel lonely and unloved because they hunger for closeness. The inconsistency in parental availability for the child ultimately results in the child believing they must self-sacrifice to maintain their caregiver’s presence and be worthy of their love. If they do exactly what is demanded of them in relationships, they will subconsciously believe that people will stick around. In adulthood, this eventually creates a strong sense of resentment from the Anxious individual toward those they are sacrificing their needs and values for. Without the understanding of why they are doing this, they will continue to do so and will create turmoil in the relationships they value the most. Another scenario in which an Anxious attachment style can arise is when one caregiver is incredibly present and connected and the other is very withdrawn—again, a form of inconsistency. This time, imagine there is a child named Parker. He has a father who is ever-present, understanding, and loving. Parker’s mother, however, is always busy at work. A constant need to be clingy will arise in him because, while positive associations are being built by his closeness to his father, they are also simultaneously being taken away by his mother. He will eventually try to use activating strategies—the process of using past knowledge to make future decisions—to keep his mother from leaving. However, his energy is invested into maintaining closeness to his mother rather than learning how to self-soothe. This is why you’ll see the Anxious Attachment in adulthood ultimately working to prevent someone from leaving by doing whatever they perceive that person needs, rather than working on the actual problem at hand.

A Prayer about Normal Trials Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, as was necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Pet. 1:3–7) Heavenly Father, today I need a fresh supply of persevering grace, for the “all kinds of trials” of life are sapping my spirit and weighing me down. I need to be reassured that you are refining my faith and not just ignoring me. I feel tired, weary, disillusioned, and a simmering anger is emerging in my spirit. A part of me just says, “Buck up, you woozy whiner!” But I think the gospel offers a better way. Honestly, I’m embarrassed to even speak of my trials, because I didn’t go to sleep hungry or thirsty last night, I didn’t hear gunfire echoing through my neighborhood, there’s no plague pillaging my community, I don’t live with the fear of my children being sold into slavery, and my government isn’t threatening the exercise of my faith. These are realities with which many of my brothers and sisters in Christ live on a daily basis. For me, it’s more like swimming in a pool of tiny piranha just nibbling away at my joy, energy, and peace. Please give me grace perfectly suited for the demands and the dailiness of normal life—in this body with aging joints and a leaking memory; among fellow sinner-saints who, like me, love inconsistently; in unresolved stories from the past and present of brokenness and weakness; in the face of minor injustices and a lack of common mercies; when cars, plumbing, air conditioners, and other stuff just break; when people don’t say “thank you,” people drive like maniacs, and pets pee on the carpet. Lord, in all these things, I want your hand and heart to be at work. I want to know what a man of faith looks like, not just when I am praying for daily bread or facing a firing squad but when I’m living out the implications of the gospel in the daily messiness of normal life. I pray in Jesus’ tender name. Amen.

I thought of my father and his inconsistently draconian standards and found my jaw began to lock. “You’ll have a place with us for as long as you need it and, while it’d be lovely if you were well behaved, being perfect all the time is too much to ask of most children. You’re with us because we care about you, Del, not because of anything you may or may not do.

the renewal of creation has been wrought by the Self-same Word Who made it in the beginning. There is thus no inconsistency between creation and salvation; for the One Father has employed the same Agent for both works, effecting the salvation of the world through the same Word Who made it in the beginning.