Perhaps one or both of your parents caused significant problems for you for one or more of the following reasons:

• because of their sin
• because of their mistreatment of you
• because of their further promotion of generational curses in your family.

Possible Consequences

Some days you’re feeling pretty good about what you’ve overcome and how different you turned out from struggling parents. Other days, your behavior reminds you of the verses about iniquities being passed onto the third and fourth generations (Ex. 20:5) and you feel hopeless and pathetic. Even worse, you may know someone representing the “fifth generation” who seems to have completely reversed the curses that ran in their family.  Don’t compare yourself to them. If you’re in the “second, third, or fourth generation” and still messing things up, you don’t need to throw your hands up in the air thinking there’s nothing you can do.

Be The Buffer Generation

Protection

If you’ve done less harm to your children than was done to you, then you have begun serving as a buffer for your children. The buffer role is important because you lessened the consequences for your children from the ones you experienced. Do not dismiss your legacy as the buffer. Someone has to take the first step and it’s an important calling.  Remember where sin abounded, grace abounded much more (Rom. 5:20). Be glad you were given the grace to see the need for stopping patterns. Jesus came to call the sinners to repentance (Lk. 5:32) and you have already begun to repent by doing things differently, and you can continue leading a new way for your family line. So, even if you haven’t always felt like you were being loving and even if you didn’t completely reverse all ill effects, it’s important for you to reflect upon the grace-filled and loving role you were assigned and pivotal mission you undertook to begin the process.

Changing The Tide

As a buffer from the generation above you to the generation after you, there is another important work you’re doing. You’re helping your family with an important transition. By giving your children a better life than you had, you’ve already changed your family. Your children will be positioned to cause even less harm than you did; and your grandchildren and future generations will be given the chance to be freed of the curses that gripped your parent(s) and impacted you.

Love (your offspring) fervently with a pure heart. (1 Pet. 1:22). 

Seek Help

Your job is not easy. If you need a counselor to help you increase your self-awareness, give you tools to overcome temptation, and teach you new ways of relating, it will help you reach your goals and make you feel proud of what you’ve accomplished.

Preventing New Problems

Of course, this is a fallen world and you need to keep a vigilant watch against new sins entering your family line in the present day and in the future. But you’ll have the experience resisting sinful behaviors to be able to respond well to any new struggles that may come into your family.

Stay The Course

The longer you practice your role in the buffer generation, the more influence you can have. And the One who placed you in this task, will comfort, strengthen, and guide you as you carry it out. So hold your head high in this role as buffer generation and “lay aside every weight, and the sin (of your past) which has so easily ensnared you, and run with endurance (your family-changing) race that is set before you (Heb. 12:1).”