Showing posts with label broken home. Show all posts

Monday, December 21, 2015

When You're Headed to a Broken Home for the Holidays - MARIVITTORI GORMAN CHARISMA MAGAZINE SPIRITLED WOMAN

There's some of us on this side of Christmas who don't want to go home.

There are some of us on this side of Christmas who don't want to go home. (Charisma archives)

When You're Headed to a Broken Home for the Holidays

12/18/2015 MARIVITTORI GORMAN CHARISMA MAGAZINE SPIRITLED WOMAN

The crackling fire place, the stockings all lined up in a row, the smell of warm cider and a freshly trimmed Christmas tree.

These are the pictures that dance in our minds around the holidays.

Well, it's the picture for some people.

But then there are the rest of us whose picture is much less fanciful. There's some of us on this side of Christmas who don't want to go home.

We're the ones who come from towns we'd rather not talk about or from families we are intentionally vague about when you ask us about our holiday plans. We're the ones whose families have been plagued by divorce, addiction, adultery, lies, deceit, mental illness, fits of anger, abandonment or abuse.

We're the ones whose Christmas picture is broken.

So what if you, like me, are traveling back to a broken home for the holidays? How should you prepare, react and respond?

If you are like me, you've probably developed some poor habits when you go home. Maybe you slip back into old, destructive patterns. Maybe you numb out and coast through the whole experience. Maybe you always blow up at that one family member who seems to make you crazy, even when you swore you wouldn't react that way this time.

While I know everyone's broken home is different, here's one resounding lesson I've learned that applies to them all:

Your Savior Gets It

One of the crazy-good benefits of being a Christian is that our God is not far off and unfamiliar with our struggles.

Jesus Christ Himself had a hard time when it came to His hometown. Can you remember? Mark 6:1-5 tells us that Nazareth wouldn't take him seriously.

"You mean Joseph and Mary's kid? The carpenter? Yeah right, like he ever turned out to be anything good. Wasn't she pregnant before they got married?"

It's not a newsflash that a lot of people didn't buy the whole "An angel appeared and Mary got pregnant by the Holy Spirit" thing. The people surrounding Jesus' life looked at Him and His family story as though it was a joke, or worse, an abomination. Whispers and judgmental side-glances were probably part of Jesus' entire upbringing.

And He somehow bore all of that without sinning.

Do you feel that way this holiday season? Do you always feel as though you're never taken seriously when you go back to that place? Do you feel as though you'll always be seen as that person you were when you were 12? Do you hate going home because you know you'll have to face people who have heard about the scandal that happened in your family?

You're in good company, friend. The company of Christ Himself.

Remember that Jesus' birth story wasn't the only scandal when it comes to His family. In Jewish tradition, you only included the important and swoon-worthy candidates in your genealogy. You made sure to throw in any royal bloodlines or religious heroes. You left out anyone who could bring shame on the family. This was just the way genealogies were written. Only the best are remembered.

But Jesus? His entire genealogy in Matthew 1 was a chock-full mess of adulterers, drunks, murderers, prostitutes and the like. The fact that a Jewish author would mention any of these types of misfits, especially women, was unheard of.

The point?

Jesus knows what it's like to come from a family story you're not proud of.

When it comes to family brokenness, Hebrews 4:15 tells us that our God doesn't just understand what we're dealing with on an intellectual level, but that He actually dealtwith everything we deal with. He sympathizes because He's been there. He gets it.

In other words, you serve a God who walked through it too.

Do you know what Isaiah 53:3 tells you?

That God humbled Himself to become a "man of sorrows, acquainted with our deepest grief." Friend, that's not just a nice Bible phrase. That's your hope, your anchor, your power to get through this holiday.

All the kinds of brokenness we see in this life, Jesus has seen and dealt with and become acquainted with. He doesn't just understand our weaknesses as humans, he's lived them for us.

But why? Why did Jesus even have to become familiar with our sorrows?

Because He knew we'd respond poorly amid them. We have blown up, said things we shouldn't, thought bad things, responded in anger, hidden from our issues, refused to forgive and so on. There are a multiplicity of ways we don't respond well when we go home for the holidays.

Remember that Jesus did all of life in our place—died the death we deserved but also lived the life we couldn't live. We need a righteous record, and that includes the way we respond to brokenness.

Instead of lashing out, He took the lashes. Instead of defending Himself, He took the ridicule. Instead of returning evil for evil, He returned evil for good.

You know why?

Because you need someone to do that in your place. Because you have responded poorly amid brokenness and hurt, just as I have. I have lashed out. I have returned evil for evil. I have not responded well to being misunderstood.

Jesus not only gets it, He obeyed and responded rightly in my place so I could have a perfect record before the Father.

So here's your good news this Christmas:

Jesus did family brokenness in your place. He responded the ways you should have. He has forgiven in the ways that maybe you haven't yet. He never slipped into a bad pattern with family discussions but instead always replied appropriately.

That's great news. Why? Because if you have Jesus' record in place of your own, God looks at you as though you have responded perfectly over all these years!

Let the rich and unfathomable grace roll over you this holiday season—God Himself came from a line of misfits and was even rejected by His hometown yet responded perfectly to it, in my place, for me.

Hometowns are hard, my friend, apparently even for God in the flesh.

He gets it and He's already responded well to it on your behalf, even when you didn't deserve it. Now go live in that and love your crazy family and your hard hometown, even if they don't deserve it. For this is the way God loves us. Yes, this is the way of the cross.

The Christmas picture I now cling to has nothing to do with trees or cider. It's a simple picture, but a profound one: Jesus in my place, even over the holidays.

Reprinted with permission from truewoman.org. Ashley Marivittori Gorman is an author, photographer and Master's student at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Her passion is to teach and equip women within the Christian faith through the channels of motivational speaking, small-group leadership, personal mentoring and writing.

She has served as a women's director in a local college ministry, influencing the campuses of NC State, UNC Chapel Hill and Duke University and has also served as a women's discipleship coordinator within her church campus. She lives in Durham, North Carolina, with her husband, Cole, a photographer and studio owner of Blest Studios, where they serve at their local church, The Summit.

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Thursday, October 8, 2015

The Urgent Crisis of the Young American Male - J. LEE GRADY

Why are so many disturbed young men in the United States carrying out massacres? (iStock photo )

The Urgent Crisis of the Young American Male

Why are so many disturbed young men in the United States carrying out massacres? (iStock photo )

Just one day before a crazed young gunman killed nine people in Oregon last week, police arrested four males who planned to go on a bloody rampage at their high school in central California. Fortunately those four juveniles are now in custody—but it doesn't lessen the pain of the families who lost loved ones in the Umpqua Community College shooting in Oregon.

What is happening? Why are so many disturbed young men in the United States carrying out massacres? Consider these four recent cases:

1. Christopher Harper-Mercer, 26, killed nine people at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, Oct. 1, 2015, using five handguns and a rifle. He killed himself after the rampage. An unemployed loner, his parents were divorced and he lived with his mother. He suffered from mental disorders, and neighbors said he sometimes paced the floor of his apartment until 4 a.m. According to posts online, he was fascinated with guns and frustrated that he didn't have a girlfriend. When he broke into a classroom last week he asked some students if they were Christians before shooting them in the head.

2. Dylann Storm Roof, 21, is an avowed white supremacist who shot and killed nine people, including a pastor, in Charleston, South Carolina, on June 17, 2015. He used a .45-caliber Glock pistol. His mother left his father before he was born, and his father was later accused of abusing his second wife. A high school dropout, Dylann used drugs, showed signs of obsessive compulsive disorder and was convinced that African-Americans are taking over the world. In his online posts he talked of starting a civil war. He will stand trial in July 2016.

3. Elliot Rodger, 22, went on a bloody rampage on the University of California/Santa Barbara campus on May 23, 2014. First he stabbed three Chinese men (two of them his roommates), then he shot three students at a sorority house using three semi-automatic pistols. Then he killed himself. Coming from a divorced home, he was described by those who knew him as a loner who had been bullied in school. In a video he posted on YouTube just before his shooting spree, he said he wanted to punish women who had rejected him, and to punish sexually active males because they had a more enjoyable life.

4. Adam Lanza, 20, was responsible for storming into the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on Dec. 14, 2012, and killing 20 first-graders and six adults. He murdered his mother first, then used her rifle to shoot his victims, and then killed himself. After the incident, investigators learned that Adam suffered from numerous mental problems. He loved horror movies and was fascinated by mass killings. Adam had had a strained relationship with his father since his parents separated in 2002.

A growing number of young men—even teens—are snapping. What is causing this?

The debate rages today about gun control—and certainly a case can be made that these men should never have had access to handguns or rifles. But this dilemma can't be solved simply by stricter background checks. (Elliot Rodger, for example, stabbed three of his victims with a knife, one of them 94 times. In other cases, they used guns owned by family members.)

In the cases I've described, each young man came from a broken home marked by abuse, rejection or neglect. Each was tormented by inner demons that caused him to be fascinated with conspiracies, weapons and violence. And after each massacre, people who knew these young men said they detected that they were deeply disturbed and needed intervention.

Other factors may have played a role, including drugs, video games, violent entertainment and broken relationships. But one clear factor is mental illness and an obvious lack of support for families that struggle with this problem. A lot of young men in this country today are battling anxiety, compulsive behaviors and serious psychological problems, and we can't sit back and wait for politicians to solve this.

We need spiritual answers—and the church must step up to the plate to provide more help to people like Christopher, Dylann, Elliot and Adam before they reach the breaking point. That's why I'm grateful California Pastor Rick Warren and his wife, Kay (whose 27-year-old son battled depression and committed suicide in 2013), have organized a conference on mental illness that begins today. The Gathering on Mental Health and the Church will convene at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, Oct. 7-9.

"It's time to break the silence and stigma surrounding mental illness," says Kay Warren. "Every church, regardless of size or location, can be a place of refuge and love and compassion for those who need it most."

Hopefully Saddleback's willingness to apply the gospel to this taboo topic will result in a wave of healing in this country. For too long we have ignored this complicated problem—or we've deliberately swept it under the rug. The church should be the place where families go to find answers to mental illness—and not after a school massacre but before it happens.

For more information on the Gathering on Mental Health and the Church, go to mentalhealthandthechurch.com.

J. Lee Grady is the former editor of Charisma and the director of The Mordecai Project. You can follow him on Twitter at leegrady. Check out his ministry atthemordecaiproject.org.