Family

Every human being wants to belong, wants to be understood and wants to be loved. Family is a way God created for us to experience those things, however sometimes that is not the case for everyone. I wrote this poem a long time ago and i found it in my writings. God puts the lonely in families, he revives our souls, he longs for us to belong in his family and to fill his love. May you experience the sense of belonging and family as you read this. Even as you reflect on the difficulties of family, may God heal and show you the beauty of it. We are all made for community, no man is an island, we are made for love. 

On family, on home, on the place where you feel like you belong. Behind closed doors, the place where you undress. The place where secrets are made and kept, the place where dreams are breathed into life, or deflated like a an air balloon. Home. Family. Love. Pain. Confusion. Character formation. Support, neglect, u forgiveness, patience, acceptance, anger and loss. Doors close behind you as you enter this world called home. No one out there even knows it. Everything is perfect on the outside. But deep inside you guys fight, holding on to what is right. Some eat together, some pray at night. While others watch mom and dad destroy one another, sister break brother and grandpa disillusion granddaughter by stripping all the innocence she has ever known. Quit and still on the outside. Doors open and truth comes out on the inside.

This very unit created to grow us, sometimes destroys us. Generational curses passed down, maladaptive patterns and manipulation as ways of communication. Only the God of restoration, can take such brokenness and emptiness. He takes a place of brokenness and makes it a place of overflowing goodness. From childhood tragedy, marital conflict, sibling rivalry. He takes it and makes it lovely. After all we are all in one big family, adopted by grace as sons and daughters of righteousness, made in his likeness, redeemed from the fall. Renewed made whole. Family