Growing up in the 70's had a few challenges. It has taken me years to realize that not everyone grew up in the "craziness" that I did. There was a lot of drug and alcohol use in my family. Drugs and alcohol can pervert, dilute and breed discord in an otherwise normal situation. It can take a normal family, open to the door to things that you could never imagine and can leave a generation of orphans that didn't grow up with God as the plumb line in their life. It breeds and grows exponentially feelings of rejection and abandonment. It destroys marriages, it destroys families, and it kills people that we love.
I was talking to my cousin yesterday and we both admit that Jerry Springer has nothing on us. We could be a week long special, there is way too much craziness and tragedy to be in one episode. I hadn't talked to him in years. Life has dealt us both different hands, we have moved in different directions, but as kids we were raised almost as brother and sister and despite all of the crazy there is comfort in talking to someone that knows where you come from. We can talk about the loss of his mother. We can talk about wanting to go on Dance Fever when we were in elementary school. Somehow his voice on the other end of the phone brings back so many memories of my childhood, usually with him right by my side.
When tragedy strikes we all deal with it in our own way. God has a different path to healing for all of us. When my aunt, his mother, was murdered in 1991, we both had to deal with it the best way we knew how. There is no guilt or condemnation in that statement. She was his mother, she was my favorite aunt. She was the one that was able to talk to me about things that my mother couldn't talk to me about. I loved her. However, when the dust settled, I still had my mother. He didn't. He floundered. I got married and left the area. I had kids and got busy, he is still single and lives the "Salt Life".
The amazing thing to me, the humbling love of God, has brought us back together all of these years later. I thought I had lost him forever, even wondered if he was still alive. The realization is that I had been feeling "set out" by my family essentially since my aunt had been killed. He had, too. Despite the fact that there were other aunts, we both lost our "core family" in that moment. I have never regained a feeling of "extended family" again. I have walked in pain of it, under the surface for close to 20 years now.
I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. ~John 14:18
What an awesome promise. Yesterday when we were getting off the phone, my cousin said, "God Bless You", and in that moment I realized that we are both orphans adopted into the family of God. Cousins by birth, brother and sister by circumstance, both reconciled by the blood into the same family. I am thankful and I am blessed.
Share
No comments:
Post a Comment