Family Portraits…
As a kid, there were many times I heard others say - “it must be so wonderful to grow up in your house, to be in your family?” It was, mostly, but it wasn’t perfect. Even if “perfect” is how it looked, even if “perfect” is what we wanted you to think.
It’s easy to look from the outside and think those people really have their “stuff” together. The truth is, they probably don’t, we sure didn’t. The families you might be idolizing right now are probably struggling with the same things yours is.
In our home I recall struggles with: addictions, anger, verbal and physical abuse, battles over control, depression, delinquency, even teenage sexuality and pregnancy. Yeah, we looked good from the outside, but we were struggling on the inside. Those struggles didn’t make us different nor did they make us bad. They made us normal, human really. So don’t deify us b/c we were active in our church and community, or that we didn’t smoke, drink, dance, and go to movies.
We were just human, no more, no less. We needed grace, needed understanding, needed healing, and more than a little deliverance. But sadly, we didn’t receive these in large enough doses to sustain us. However, we looked good and how we looked was very important.
Even now, I struggle to write this b/c I don’t want to upset my family by exposing our weaknesses. But as a leader I can help people with their struggles by exposing mine. At times as a kid things were really, really messy and extremely hurtful.
One of these days I’ll get the family photos digitized and put them online. You’ll be able to see my curly permed hair, my poofy disco shirts, and my huge Hubble Telescope glasses. There’s this picture of my brother and I on the couch studying our Bibles, there’s another one with three of us on the porch posing with our Bibles under our arms. It’s possible to see these pictures and think “how spiritual”. But those were just snap shots of us posing for others. It’d be no more helpful in discovering our spiritual health than a road map of Chicago would be in discovering New York City.
Much of how we present ourselves to each other is tantamount to the smoke and mirrors of a magic show. It’s kinda like before we walk out of our houses we say “abracadabra” and we suddenly have our stuff together.
Please know, this isn’t a rant against my parents, I love them, all of us kids did. Mom and Dad were actually transition figures coming out of their own families’ dysfunctions.
The point I’m trying to make is this - if were going to get better, if were going to get healed, then were going to have to get real. Our family needed some serious help, but didn’t get it because we were busy posing for family portraits…
