By Debbie Wicker, BCCC
“Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.” — Exodus 20:12 (NIV)
A Difficult Childhood
I had a difficult childhood.
I know that many people say those words, and sometimes having had a difficult childhood can almost become a badge of honor. But in my case, there was genuine and significant trauma throughout my childhood.
I moved 18 times before I graduated from high school, including moves to several different states. I lived in the inner city in three different cities. When I was in kindergarten, I walked a mile by myself each day along a very busy and dangerous street in Cleveland, Ohio.
When I was 13, my mother left and kicked me out of her home so that she could have her boyfriends visit. Both of my parents married and divorced multiple times. They eventually died relatively young, broke, and alone.
I began working many hours a week in my father’s business when I was ten years old. I worked full-time every summer until I left for college.
When I was four, I became aware that my father was being unfaithful to my mother. As I grew older, I also knew that he continued having affairs with women at the stores where I worked for him. My father was a devout atheist and spent much of his business life taking advantage of others. He never filed or paid his taxes and went bankrupt multiple times.
My mother was often physically abusive toward her children. I watched her beat my oldest sister daily for many years.
So, needless to say, my childhood was anything but easy.
And yet, this is where my story of learning to honor my parents begins.
Receiving the Ten Commandments
I was living in inner-city Milwaukee when the mother of a friend first told me about God and Jesus.
I was nine years old and had very little understanding of what she was talking about. But I began praying, and I experienced Jesus answering my prayers for help. Somehow, even without fully understanding what it meant, I became a believer.
The woman who introduced me to Jesus also gave me a bracelet with the Ten Commandments on it. At the time, that bracelet was my primary connection to Christianity.
I remember studying those commandments carefully. They helped me begin to understand the difference between right and wrong and gave me a framework for understanding how God wanted me to live.
But there was one commandment I struggled with more than all the others:
“Honor your father and your mother.”
I simply didn’t understand it.
Also, I didn’t believe that either of my parents had done anything that deserved my honor. I have shared only a portion of what happened during my childhood, but there were many days when I genuinely hated both of my parents.
How was I supposed to honor people who had hurt me so deeply?
A Change of Heart
As I prayed about my hatred toward my parents, I believe God slowly began changing my heart.
During my early twenties, hatred began turning into love—even though both of my parents were still making destructive choices.
God began showing me something I had not understood as a child:
My hatred was hurting me, not them.
My anger, bitterness, and desire for justice could not undo what had happened. Holding onto those feelings kept me connected to the pain of my past.
God also taught me that vengeance belongs to Him, not to me.
When I chose to honor my parents, I wasn’t saying that everything they had done was acceptable. I wasn’t pretending that their behavior hadn’t harmed me.
Instead, I was choosing to obey God.
And in doing so, I was honoring Him.
That choice became part of my healing.
What Does It Mean to Honor Your Parents?
I spent many, many hours thinking about this question.
What does honor actually mean?
Why should I honor my parents?
The word itself seemed strange to me, and I had an even harder time understanding how I could actually live it out.
Remember, I was only nine years old when I first began wrestling with this commandment. As I matured, my understanding of it matured as well.
Over the years, I came to understand honoring my parents as a three-step process.
1. Love Your Parents and Don’t Hate Them
Love each of your parents as best you can.
That doesn’t mean pretending their mistakes didn’t happen. It means choosing not to hate them and trying to see their lives through a lens of empathy and respect.
My parents had five children in six years and lived in extreme poverty. Also, my mother deeply resented my father because of his infidelity and because we often had very little money or food.
My father loved my mother, but he made terrible choices that frequently harmed our entire family.
Finally, my parents fought almost every day of their marriage. After 25 years, they finally divorced after living through decades of misery.
There was a great deal to understand and empathize with.
Seeing their humanity didn’t excuse their behavior. But it helped me understand that they, too, were broken people making broken choices.
And that understanding helped me let go of hatred.
2. Honor Does Not Mean Having Inappropriate Boundaries
This was an especially important lesson for me.
Honoring someone does not mean allowing that person to continue harming you.
My father stole from me, and if I had not established boundaries, I believe he could have pulled me down with him.
I learned that I could love my father without allowing his destructive behavior to destroy my own life.
Boundaries and honor are not opposites.
Sometimes establishing healthy boundaries is exactly what allows us to love someone without participating in their sin or destructive choices.
You can forgive someone and still say no.
Also, you can love someone and still protect yourself.
Finally, you can honor a parent without giving them unlimited access to your life.
3. Forgive and Care for Them When They Need You
I never completely turned my back on either of my parents.
When they needed help, I tried to help them as best I could—emotionally, spiritually, and financially.
Both of my parents eventually died with very little. I paid for their funerals.
My father experienced periods of homelessness and many illnesses, and I was able to care for him during those difficult years. My mother eventually moved to Florida, so I had much less contact with her. But when she was diagnosed with brain cancer in her early fifties, I tried to help her as much as I could.
Looking back, I can see that God led me through the process with both of my parents.
I didn’t do everything perfectly. I certainly didn’t understand everything at the time.
But I chose to forgive.
I chose to love.
I chose to help when I could.
And I chose to leave justice in God’s hands.
That decision continues to benefit me today.
The Ten Commandments Are Comprehensive
The Ten Commandments aren’t simply a list of rules. They reveal something about the character of God and His desire for how we should live.
God created us, and He loves us.
He wants what is best for every one of us.
He loved my parents even though they frequently turned away from Him and made terrible choices. Sadly, neither of my parents had a healthy relationship with their own parents.
I believe God had answers for much of the misery in their lives, but they refused to listen to Him and submit their lives to Him.
The consequences were heartbreaking.
Their choices affected not only themselves but also their children and the generations that followed.
That realization has helped me understand the commandment to honor my parents in a much deeper way.
Honor Is Not Approval
One of the most important things I have learned is that honoring a parent does not mean approving of everything that parent has done.
I don’t honor the abuse.
And I don’t honor the infidelity.
I don’t honor dishonesty, theft, or destructive choices.
I honor the fact that they were my parents and, more importantly, that they were people created and loved by God.
That distinction changed everything for me.
I could acknowledge the truth about my childhood without allowing that truth to control the rest of my life.
And I could remember what happened without remaining imprisoned by it.
I could forgive without pretending.
And I could love without surrendering healthy boundaries.
What God Taught Me Through My Parents
Both of my parents are now gone.
I cannot go back and change my childhood. Also, I cannot make different choices for them. I cannot undo the things that happened.
But I can choose what I do with those experiences today.
For me, honoring my parents became part of allowing God to heal me.
The hatred I once carried didn’t punish them. It only kept me connected to my own pain.
Forgiveness didn’t erase my history. Instead, it helped free me from being controlled by it.
And learning to love my parents, despite their failures, taught me something profound about God’s grace.
God doesn’t ask us to pretend that evil is good.
He asks us to trust Him with justice.
Also, He asks us to forgive.
He asks us to love.
And sometimes He asks us to do those things in circumstances where they seem completely impossible.
Your Journey May Look Different
Honoring my parents has been a deeply personal journey.
Your journey may look very different from mine.
Some parents are loving and supportive. But, some are absent. Also, some are deeply wounded themselves. Or, some are abusive or destructive. Some relationships require significant boundaries, distance, or even complete separation for safety.
Honoring a parent does not require you to remain in an unsafe situation.
But I do believe that God calls us away from hatred, bitterness, and the desire for revenge.
Those things keep us tied to the past.
Forgiveness, by contrast, opens the door to freedom.
When we surrender our anger and our desire for vengeance to God, we make room for Him to begin healing the places in us that have been wounded.
That was true for me.
And it changed my life.
A Final Thought
If you have struggled with the commandment to “honor your father and your mother,” I want you to know that I understand how difficult it can be.
I once thought my parents were the last people on earth who deserved my honor.
But God gradually taught me that honoring them wasn’t primarily about what they deserved.
It was about who I wanted to become.
Also, it was about obeying God.
It was about refusing to allow their choices to determine the condition of my heart.
And ultimately, it was about allowing God to heal me.
I invite you to bring your own relationship with your parents before God.
Ask Him what honoring them should look like in your particular circumstances.
Consider Asking Him for wisdom about boundaries.
Ask Him for the strength to forgive.
Seek Him to help remove bitterness and hatred from your heart.
And trust Him with the things you cannot change.
The past may have shaped you, but with God’s help, it does not have to imprison you.
Sometimes the road to healing begins with a difficult commandment—and a willingness to let God show us what it truly means.
About the Author
Debbie Wicker is a Board Certified Christian Counselor who brings a thoughtful mental health perspective to the study of the Bible. With more than 15 years of counseling experience, Debbie helps individuals understand Scripture not only spiritually, but emotionally and psychologically as well.
Before entering counseling, Debbie was a partner in a Big 8 public accounting firm, where she built a successful career in management consulting. After a mid-life career change, she felt called to integrate faith and mental health — equipping others to grow spiritually while addressing real-life struggles with wisdom and compassion.
Through the-Bible.net, Debbie writes to help readers better understand God’s Word, human nature, and the transforming power of Christ.