Too Broken?

It has been a tough couple of days. I will spare you the gory details, but our 13 year old son just returned from a week-long Grandma vacation where he spent virtually every day either at an amusement park, water park, or on the water in their sailboat. And now he is home. And we are moving on Saturday. We have teen angst in spades. He is not a happy camper. And he is letting us know-in all his teen angst-y ways.

Ugh.

Today, I got frustrated. He got frustrated. There was yelling, there were tears, there was drama.

The truth is that I know him better than he would like me to and it's my job to help him learn to know himself. So after the hours of drama and angst, I sat down with him. No TV, no phone, no computer-just me and him (and the dog). We talked. We discussed. We walked through scenarios and discussed how we both could have handled things differently. We were accountable. We prayed. But we did not yell. We did not say mean and hateful things to one another.

I revealed to him, during this "non-yelling" time, that we are a broken family. I am a broken person and I know I cannot have anything but a broken family-no matter how hard I try. I make mistakes. I yell, I sometimes swear (gasp!), I get angry and place the blame where it doesn't belong, I get frustrated and take it out on my family. I am broken.

But my God is a God of redemption.

He takes the broken pieces of me and my family and He mends them back together and creates something new and more beautiful than I could ever have imagined. I am weary and broken under my burdens and He invites me to rest.

We will never be a "perfect family" because that is really just an illusion. Real life is messy and loud. There will be arguing and yelling (hopefully less as time goes on-it's something I am working on). There will be hurt feelings and anger.

But there is always God. Always there, inviting us to rest and lay down our burdens. Put down the anger and tears and let him mend our hearts. There is no one, no family, that is too broken for God.

And with his help, there is joy and laughter in our family. There are good times. There are happy times.

And God is always there, enjoying our joy.

Blessings,
Meri