Introduction & Context
This article is the result of a letter-writing exercise that is part of a counselling activity and material called Love is a Choice. As part of the chapter titled “Running on Empty”, we are introduced to the concept of love tanks which is a God-given hunger for love. The following explanation is an extract from the workbook chapter:
Imagine a heart-shaped reservoir deep inside you. When you were a tiny baby, this love tank was innocently on empty and awaiting the rich parenting of two sane, sober adults. If your parents were both emotionally health people with full love tanks of their own, they would have spent two generous decades filling you love tank from theirs. This is the way God intended it to be.
Chapter 3, Love is a choice workbook
In this way, the generations of a family all are interconnected in feeding our love tanks. Its is also important to note that as part of assessing how our own love tanks were filled, or not, that we NOT judge individuals. The reality and high likelihood was that everyone before you was doing the best they could given their backgrounds, culture and circumstances to provide the best form of love they knew.
The practical exercise here was for participants to draw a diagram which represented our family generations and how the past generations fed our own love tank. We are encouraged to estimate how much love we think was in each of our grandparents and parents love tanks. Generally, without the additional influence and input from God and a loving community (family or faith-based), each generation cannot fill a future generation beyond their own capacity in their tanks. Indeed, God offers a replacement to the pain and emptiness with His love expressed directly though Holy Spirit and indirect through the new healthy support relationships He adds to our lives. With God’s help, our own love tanks and successive generations can benefit from the healing and overflowing love that comes solely from Him.
As we consider these concepts and work through the draw of a family/generations of love tanks, the exercises may stir up some anger or resentment. These feelings are what we are encouraged to write and record in a series of letters for each of the individuals of influence that form your family and earlier generations feeding into your own love tank.
Dear God
Dear God, as I reflect on my family and the relationship we have had since I gave myself to you as a Year 7 teenager, a multitude of emotions and feelings fill my heart. If I think about myself too much, it is easy to become full of self-pity and to wallow in that state of sorrow.
Am I angry? Am I sad? When I try to recall how I felt as a child, it is clear that the loss of my mum was very traumatic to the point where I consciously decided to suppress and erase my childhood as much as possible. Having made a serious effort as a child to forget, over the years, as I have grown up I have slowly and cautiously tested myself to see what I do remember – and surprisingly there are fragments of memories that predate the passing of my mum. Unfortunately, some of these “memories” may be corrupted by a combination of photographs, video footage and even audio recordings.
There was no doubt a lot of pain and hurt from my childhood. The loss of a loved one is a trauma that never really goes away. Even as an adult there is a dullness to the pain – it is no longer a sharp overwhelming feeling, but it is nonetheless pain. As a child, I didn’t know better so I repeatedly asked you God – why did you take away my mum from me? Why was I being “punished” even from just a young age? Writing this letter to you God is unique in that you are God and not just another human person. The journey and relationship we have been on is by far the most complex of my life – and as I have grown over the years to better understand your nature and who you are, you have indeed provided for me in every need and even showered me with so many blessings.
Sometimes I wonder if I did have the fullness of a relationship with my mum into adulthood, that I would be as close as I am to you God. I mean, as hard as it was being raised by a single parent/father who did the best he could, the freedom of his parenting in part pushed me to you and church. After all, the moment I started growing in faith as a result of the youth group and then university ministries, I very quickly reached a point where the expectations and ideals for a spiritual father made me realise that I could not turn to my earthly father for that kind of guidance – but instead would need you, my Heavenly Father to be my shepherd.
May I always be able to see and appreciate the things of you in this world and lifetime. Help me to recognise your voice and presence in and around me. Thank you Father God for never leaving me and help me to love those around me according to Your will and purpose.
In Jesus name! Amen