Picking Up The Pieces

Something very near and dear to my heart is the role parents play in raising children.  Parents are already charged with a million different duties that are overwhelming and at times almost impossible to accomplish.  Tasks include providing a healthy home, keeping a marriage alive and romantic, cleaning and paying bills.  The list can seem endless and children may often be left in the peripheries.   

Paul addresses issues of marriage in Ephesian chapter five.  However, this ideal concept has fallen away.  The worst is when there is a gross breakdown of rules and boundaries.  Abusive relationships, adultery, or one of the parents abandoning the family all leave very significant marks upon both spouse and children.  Healing can take a lifetime and more often than not requires serious therapy.  

For children the consequences run even deeper.  Relationship roles are redefined and changed, trust issues are formed, and many needs are met in unhealthy ways.  How can we as Chi Alpha Campus Ministry address the issues of a broken home life on the college campus?

Let me tell the story of my scars and how God led me into a place of forgiveness and healing.  (Warning the following story contains some graphic material.)

My family life was rough as a kid.  My parents always fought both physically and verbally.  My father never hit me, but only because my mother intercepted him.  After several years of abusive marriage my mother divorced my father.  It wasn't easy for her as a single mother.  She was a Special Education teacher and loved her job and her students but had a hard time raising two emotionally scarred children.  She herself suffered from Bipolar Disorder which made life even more complicated.  There were massive spending sprees that accrued debt and weeks where she didn't even want to get out of bed.  She struggled as a mother but she did her best.  However finances became too much for her to bear alone and she moved back in with her parents.  After years of disability leave, therapy, and attempts by her parents to help her get on her feet she decided it was easier to move back in with my father where the abuse started again. After a period of about two years it finally became too much for her and she took her life.  I was only sixteen.  

How do you explain to a teenager that his father and mother have both abandoned him?  This was the task that my Grandparents faced.  They tried the best they could to explain things to me.  That mom loved me dearly even though she abandoned me.  Shortly after the incident my Grandparents decided it was in my best interest to become my legal guardians and raise me throughout the rest of my childhood.  To this day I consider this a miracle.  They put all the support checks into a bank account to prepare me for college and paid for everything I needed out of their personal accounts.  They supported and loved me in ways I had never known.  But questions and memories still lingered in my young head.  Why did this happen?  If there was a God why would he let this happen!  

Fast-forward to my freshmen year of college.  I had trouble forming new friendships.  In fact, I couldn’t form any.  “Everyone will leave me eventually” is a thought that constantly ran through my head.  So I didn’t seek out friends but longed for somebody, anybody to reach out to me.  So I did something I hadn’t done in years.  I prayed.  “Lord, if you will give me one friend, I will stay in college and not quit.  You have one week to prove to me that this is worth it.”  

God likes to answer the desperate ultimatums of those seeking Him for the first time.  It’s the cries of the desperate that He loves to answer.  How do I know?  

I prayed that prayer on a Sunday evening and by Friday evening I had a set of friends that would change my life forever.  Why?  Because they pursued me.  They were intentional with me and loved me in ways that I hadn’t felt before.  Their names were Kristin, Jessica, and Will.   Through them I would form lasting friendships and learn what it was to love somebody.  Eventually, through their friendships and my own research I would find Jesus.  

Now, what does this have to do with healing the scars of my childhood?  Let’s look.  There are a multitude of commands in the Old Testament that talks about loving the orphan and the widow.  But there is one Psalm in particular that I think is what God wants us as a church to embody.  

Psalm 27:7-10 says this:

Hear me as I pray, O Lord.

Be merciful and answer me!

My heart has heard you say, "Come and talk with me."

And my heart responds, "Lord I am coming."

Do not turn your back on me.

Do not reject your servant in anger.

You have always been my helper.

Don't leave me now; don't abandon me,

O God of my salvation!

Even if my father and mother abandon me,

the Lord will hold me close.

This cry of David is very intimate and very personal.  I have no idea what his parents have done to make David feel abandoned but he is confident in 3 things.  1) The Lord hears our prayers.  2) The Lord speaks.  3) The Lord will never abandon us.  You see God the Father loves us as children.  We are His adopted heirs!  In fact the Lord wants to father us.  He wants to teach us and provide us with the things we need in this life to make it safely to the end.  In my case, God used my Grandparents to care for me, provide for me, and lead me to a place that when I was ready, He could take over.  God was patient and helped me to understand what my parents went through.  He taught me about forgiveness and gave me time to work it out.  Without God and Chi Alpha I would still be hanging on to immense pain and grudges against my father and mother.  

I am the student that walks by you daily.  Do you care enough to pursue me and introduce me to the Father who can heal the deepest wounds?