My Broken Family

My family decided to come to Michigan for Labor Day weekend to see my uncle and spend some time on the lake. We left yesterday evening and got here to Benton Harbor (only an hour from Chicago?!) around midnight. I'm sharing a room with my grandma (my step-dad's mom) and after getting ready for bed and watching some CNN we ended up having a long conversation about the Bible and the value of the Old Testament. I got to share with her how sweet it was that I was part of a church and a college ministry in Iowa City that really valued the Old Testament and taught me to love it. It was so great to share that talk with my grandma and realize how God brings together generations and how much we can learn from eachother. It's also really amazing to see how our family interacts. There seem to be a lot of issues going on; even in the fraction of the family that is here this weekend there is divorce, remarriage, children out of wedlock, adoption, stepdads, etc., but we're together here this weekend gathered in love and fun and that's just what it means to be a family. The only instance of bitterness and pain was when we were playing Catch Phrase and Grandma said, "Well you guys will never get this one, you're all too stupid!" Now that's really what it really means to be a family.

I listened to a talk once given by an intelligent and godly man who spoke for a brief time about the sinfulness and pain of divorce and the blasphemy and adultery of remarriage. This is a pretty touchy subject for me because my family is one big mess of divorce and remarriage. There is certainly pain and sinfulness there, but there's also a level reconciliation, unity and love that runs deep. Maybe it's only because of the pain that the love shines through so brightly but it hurts a lot to hear a respectable man say to my face (well, many faces) that my family is outside of the will of God, especially when my relationship with my stepdad's mom is one of the most spiritually encouraging relationships I will ever experience. I think my family stands as proof that God uses our sin to teach us forgiveness and give us opportunities for unity with him and his people that are beyond anything we could ever imagine. And that, my friends, is what it means to be a Family with a capital F.