AUNT SALLY is happy to provide free personal advice and opinions on a variety of subjects.
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Send your questions or comments to Aunt Sally via email at [email protected] or by
regular mail at Ask Aunt Sally, Salvation Army Publications, 615 Slaters Lane, Alexandria, VA 22313.
Questions appropriate for printing in the War Cry will be answered through this column.
Parents should discuss and clarify with
each other their feelings, viewpoints and
hopes regarding assistance of any sort to
their grown children. Ideally, this should
be done before any crisis arises, and
already fleshed out should the need pres-
ent itself.
A few things should be taken into
consideration. First, make an objective
assessment of your adult child's situation.
Is this a need or a want? Is this a situation
that could not have been avoided or the
result of repeated poor decisions? Will
your participation move your daughter
towards independence or keep her teth-
ered to you?
Take a clear inventory of your own fi-
nancial and emotional health. There must
be enough finances to support yourself
now, and later in retirement. Is your
daughter's repeated need for help tak-
ing a toll on you emotionally? You will be
no good to yourself or your child if your
resources are drained through repeated
rescues.
You may want to take a different
approach and explore other options to
truly assist your daughter in earning an
income, living within her means and
making better life decisions.
Remember that you have already
raised your daughter. Her
life is now in her hands.
While you may con-
tinue to give counsel,
provide the occasion-
al small gifts and love
her immensely, she is
in control of her life.
Sometimes the hard-
est thing to do is to
stand by and allow
our adult children to
make--and live with
the results of--their
own choices.
Dear Enough?:
It's only natural for parents to want to
help their children, no matter the age.
And we'd like to think that in a crisis,
when there is nowhere else to turn, our
family can be counted on to help us. In
asking whether you should continue to
help your daughter, it is clear that this is
not a one-time assistance; there has been
a pattern of her getting into difficulty and
you coming to the rescue.
There is a significant difference be-
tween providing assistance and enabling.
When difficulty threatens to undo us or
our family situation, a helping hand from
parents may be just what we need to get
safely through the storm. That is assis-
tance. Enabling keeps one dependent on
another and delays opportunity for the
one in need to learn and mature. Enabling
someone hinders their ability to be in-
dependent through self-sufficiency.
It can look like a helping hand,
but have the opposite
effect.
Dear Aunt Sally:
My daughter often struggles with
paying her bills and making dif-
ficult decisions in her life. Should
I continue to step in and help her
get out of these bad situations?
--Enough is Enough?
Dear Aunt Sally:
Some people think we
each have a guardian
angel. What do you think?
--Hope So!
Dear Hope:
There is a great fascination with angels
today, and a great deal of misinforma-
tion as well. A variety of beliefs about
angels have developed and exist in the
world. But the truth about these spiritual
beings can only be found in God's Word,
the Bible. A few verses from Scripture
give us the most important aspect of an-
gels, that they serve at God's direction:
� "Are not all angels ministering spirits
sent to serve those who will inherit
salvation?" (Hebrews 1:14).
� "For He will command His angels con-
cerning you to guard you in all your
ways" (Psalm 91:11).
� "Praise the Lord, you His angels, you
mighty ones who do His bidding, who
obey His word" (Psalm 103:20).
Angels are unique creations of God,
made for the specific purposes of glo-
rifying Him through worship and serv-
ing Him through ministry in the lives of
Christians. They have been used to give
His messages to people, to execute His
judgment and to fight spiritual battles
with the fallen angels of Satan. But they
always act at the direction of God and
for His purposes. Their faces are always
on Him. They are always at His disposal.
There is no direct reference in Scrip-
ture regarding each Christian being as-
signed an angel for protection. But we
can take comfort in the fact that God
uses these heavenly beings to accom-
plish His purposes, and that He alone
knows when one of us needs the inter-
vention of an angel.
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