When Home is Broken
December 11, 2019

1 John 4:7-8
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

As God continues to teach me about His healing, He graciously and mercifully continues to take my heart to its broken places; places I never knew were there, or others long left buried. This has been difficult for me to write because this place still feels broken in many ways, and yet the Lord is faithful to love me through my own pain and brokenness and to fill the gaps of loss in His restoration process. We are all works in progress. Healing comes to each of us, as we are ready for it. God is continuing to walk me through His healing processes to teach me…to teach you.

The holidays are upon us. Magazines are filled with articles about going “home for the holidays”, family traditions, and recipes Mom or Grandma used to make. Many of us were blessed with warm childhood memories in homes filled with family, love and laughter. We cling to those memories and try to recreate them, over and over again. They become a family’s heritage. These are gifts to remember, because for many of us going “home for the holidays” hurts.

Many of us had broken homes when we were little and then grew up to watch our children have broken homes as well. Or maybe we have chosen another path in order to protect ourselves, or others, from passing on or repeating, our experienced poverty or pain, to a next generation. Our point of deepest pain is the place we protect the proudest and the loudest, or is the place that is held most personal and private. Broken lives have brought broken relationships. Broken relationships have brought broken families. Broken families have brought broken homes. Yet, home is where our hearts are.

After having lived life for several decades, we begin to have scars from both life and death, itself. There is joy and pain intermingled in every family tree. Love and loss live together. Going “home for the holidays” is not always possible. As much as we may want to go back to find our comfort in those memories and familiar places, or as much as we want to avoid them, they are not the same anymore. They become less familiar with the passage of time, because time changes everything. What home is becomes different with each passing season. Our heritage becomes history.

“Home” is multi-dimensional because home is multi-generational. We first experience home as children, within our family of origin. Home is where we lived, played and grew up. The city or inner city, the suburb, the farm or the ranch, these places and the people around us, become part of us. It’s where we have our first experiences of family, love and security. Home is where we belong.

Home is supposed to be our safe place. It is, until something shakes our foundation. Then it doesn’t feel safe any more. Home becomes a place of resentment and bitterness, of aggression and hostility, because our need for security is left unmet. Whatever it is that hurt us, leading us to our own sense of feeling rejected, we reject. So we search for a new safe place to make our “home”. We search for love.

As adult children, we search to reestablish a new safe place to call “home”. At times we recreate an exact replica of what we knew, at other times we recreate the exact opposite. We marry or don’t marry; we have children or don’t have children, making choices we believe are safe ones. We guard our hearts from love, which is actually our deepest and greatest need.

We all have a need to be loved. We were created by a God who IS love. If God is love, (He can be nothing less) and we were created in His image, then we, His children, are meant to be vessels and conduits of that love. In a perfect world, we would love and be loved perfectly. In a perfect world, we would never experience pain. Yet we live in a broken world, with broken people, who leave their broken-hearted imprints on every beaten path they tread.

What if someone at home, who was supposed to love us, did not love us correctly? What if we weren’t protected and secure in that love? What if we were told we weren’t wanted, needed, or worthy of love? What if words of love only came with conditions? What if words of love only came with performance, with punishment, or with pain? What if words of love never came?

What if the people who were supposed to love us, didn’t love themselves? What if they were never loved? What if the rejection they experienced themselves, they received and believed, became the foundation of lies they passed on to their children? We expect those we love will love us in return. We expect those we trust are trustworthy. We expect not to be hurt. Not by family. Not by friends. Not by God.

When someone who is supposed to represent love, peace, and protection hurts us, it opens the door to fear. Our sense of security is shattered. We begin to fear rejection, abandonment, and being hurt again. Although we believe we are motivated by love, we begin to be driven by that fear, propelled through life in our own self-protective armor, shielding ourselves from anything and everything that could possibly betray us or leave us vulnerable. We reject those we need most. We reject our faith, believing that somehow that is what hurt us in the first place. Our sense of love is distorted.

Brothers and sisters, have we forgotten what love is? Have we forgotten what it is to love and be loved? “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” (1 Cor. 13:4-8a)

Going “home for the holidays” doesn’t have to hurt, because there is no fear in love. The overwhelming love we feel in our hearts, when we remember and miss someone, is God, because God is love. Every time we feel love, and are full of compassion or filled with joy, we are experiencing God, because God is love. Every time we are shedding tears of love even in our sorrow, we are experiencing God, because God is love. The love of God expressed through us, is the love of God that rescues us.

God first loved us, by sending His son to live, to show us how to love, and conquered death, to show us how to live. Jesus left His home in heaven to make a way for us to have an eternal home with Him.

Because home is where our hearts are.

“Home” is anywhere we can love and be loved, because God is love. When home is broken, LOVE.

Sincerely, Susan