New Eyes

I've had this post in progress for a good while now. In the past year, my thinking has undergone a bit of a transformative process. I actually think being exposed to PCL's philosophy had a lot to do with it. I've always believed in sustainable projects and sustainable living, but I remember a conversation with Jake and later with Matt (the director of the orphanage in Cambodia) in which we talked about orphanages and their purpose. A point was made that the hope is that by providing education and help, parents would be able to provide for their children, thus eliminating many of the issues that lead to abandonment of children. This conversation was in July of 2013.

Fast forward to 2014. We had a service and prayer time for Royal Family at our church. At the end, we got in a circle around the church to pray. A lady in that circle spoke up, as different people had expressed a need for prayer for the children we serve. Her request was a little different. See, this wonderful woman of God and her husband run a Prison Ministry. They see God work in the lives of people who are at their most broken, their most vile in some cases, their most vulnerable. She asked for prayer for the biological parents of our kids, that they would be drawn to the Lord and provided care by people so that they could do what they needed to do to have their kids returned to their care. I'm going to be 100% honest; for one moment, I was taken aback. See, I've heard the stories of the abuse and neglect. I've heard them in the news, from real teenagers in my classroom, and from kids at camp. We want to pray for our kids to be put back in those situations??? Then it hit me that our prayer is NOT for our kids to "be put back in those situations", but for those situations to be changed and redeemed by the grace of our Lord, just like MY life was changed and redeemed by the grace of our Lord.

After that night, I thought about it even more and realized that many of the people Eddie and Gloria serve in their prison ministry actually probably CAME from the foster care system themselves. Some of them are possibly Royal Family "kids". It's such a vicious cycle. And if we could break it by reaching in at the root, how many lives would be changed? As much as I love Royal Family, do you know what I would love even more? If there was NO NEED for Royal Family.

This past year, I have seen in a far more personal way than ever before the ravages of divorce. Again, honesty here: Divorce is so common and people seem to approach it so cavalierly that I have bought into the lie of our society that it really doesn't do that much harm... that it mostly only affects the kids and they are able to get over it quickly... that it hurts for a bit and then live moves on. I truly had started to believe that. My thinking first started to change by watching the show that ended this year called "Parenthood". (I know, it's kind of sad to reference a tv show, but bear with me.) The writers of that show did a most incredible job showing the intense pain of divorce for the couple, their children, and even the extended family.

Unfortunately, since then, I have felt the tremors as the ground has shaken under two of my good friends whose marriages have shattered. I've walked, from a distance but still closer than I have ever been before, with them through this difficult valley. I've prayed for them and with them, worried about them, talked to them, and loved on the kids of one of them. I cried an entire weekend of tears for the family I'm closest to... and through the process, I've seen that nobody wins. No matter who initiates the separation, everybody is in pain.

One of these two friends has found a ministry called Rejoice Marriage Ministries. They support a movement they refer to as "standing". (You might have seen the video in which Miss Kay from "Duck Dynasty" talks about her early years of marriage to Phil. Same concept.) The idea is that you stand for your marriage, you claim that the Lord has ordained the two of you to be together. Some people refuse to sign the papers, some just continue to pray and hold out hope that the Lord will revive the relationship. We discussed the fact that this sort of ministry (and message) is very rare in the church. I talked to another friend the other day, a friend whose own marriage has been shaken but recovered. She mentioned how many people she could name, people in the church, who have walked those shaky grounds of a marriage in trouble.

Some churches have divorce care. Some offer counseling and I would assume any pastor would counsel with people whose marriage is struggling. But I have recently started to wonder if maybe the answer is in marriage support, couples groups, small groups, friendships, community, and accountability. I know that I have felt very guilty that maybe we should have done more for our friends, been more present, been more open, been more supportive.

I'm afraid we (we meaning the church, we meaning our society, we meaning MY church, we meaning MY FAMILY, we meaning ME) pour our resources into first aid when we could (should) be vaccinating and distributing vitamins, teaching fitness and clean eating. I'm not saying that first aid isn't needed, because it certainly is. There is always going to be sin in the world, and sin leads to terrible situations. But if we could also work to support marriage, to heal the hurting, to help the drug addict recover, to reach a hand to the teenager before he or she gets too far down a path of destruction...

I don't know, really. This post isn't about answers in the slightest, it's merely a record of the struggles of my mind and the slow evolution of my own perspective and thinking over the past few years. I don't know how this will affect the future of my own causes and ministries, if my life will take a different path than I had imagined, but I do know that I'm looking around in a new way, through new eyes.


*I did ask permission from the friends who are referenced in this blog. Small town, small world, it's not usually hard to figure out who people are. :)