Dear friend,

 

This week was our annual family camp: a week with my parents and siblings, their spouses and kids. I am the oldest of six children, three of us are married, and five of the six of us were able to come this year (one of my siblings lives in New Zealand and comes every other year). We moved campers onto my parents backyard and stayed onsite for four days together.  I shared a few glimpses of our family time on Instagram this week. My mom put together a lovely schedule of events, we took turns cooking, and stayed up way too late talking and playing games. 

 

My parents, and all six of us - their kids - are followers of Christ.  A common response to the little peeks I shared was: “You are so lucky”, “I wish I had this”, “You should be grateful for what you have!"

 

Our family is far from perfect. We have conflicts, struggles, disagreements, annoyances and even fights. As hard as these things are, I am grateful that we work through them with the gospel in mind, doing our best to point to the truth of Scripture and the heart of God through it all. 

 

I am deeply grateful for what we have.

 

And yet I must be clear: Luck had nothing to do with our family. This didn't happen by chance. It wasn't an accident. It was a miracle, but it was miracle brought about by faith-filled obedience to God's heart: the hard, long road of obedience, breaking generational chains of pain. 

 

My friend Ryan Coatney says “Christian kids are always a miracle and never an accident.” No greater truth has been spoken. I watched my parents sacrifice so much time, money, energy, and emotion trying to break the chains of trauma with the help of the Holy Spirit. That work is ongoing, but they gave us a far greater foundation than we would have had if they'd remained in bondage to the past. I can't imagine the harm I would have been handed if my parents had chosen to make their trauma their identity; letting it define them rather than refine them. 

Freedom, though, is ongoing. Sometimes it's instantaneous, but more often it's the daily process of the Spirit's sanctification. When our family is together we must remember His work and His conviction, refusing to default to old habits and sinful patterns. This is the hard road of humility: Recognizing where we are wrong and allowing Christ to shape us into His image.

 

I heard someone say, “My mother didn't break every generational pattern, but she broke some.” It reminds me of this scene from the movie A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. In my journey of forgiveness (which I've been on for quite some time) this scene plays in my mind's eye, reminding me that even the hardest, most painful, unjust experiences can be redeemed. There are parts of me that wouldn't exist without the pain. And yet God took that pain and gave us the road to leave it: forgiveness instead of bitterness, grace instead of performance, the Spirit-led life instead of spiritual abuse.

 

Yes, our family is close. We love to be with our parents and with each other. But this legacy had a cost: hours upon hours of discipleship, hard conversations, refusing to brush things under the rug, confronting sin directly, forgiving when people fail, learning to control our tongues, believing the best, bearing the hard, and living a 1 Corinthians 13 love. 

 

Yes, it is a miracle. But it is not an accident.

 

I received other messages last week:

“Thank you for showing what your parents did for you. It gives me hope.”

“This is what I'm dreaming of for my family.”

“I am so glad to know it is possible to redeem my family line.”

 

I'm so glad my parents did not give up. I'm so glad they kept laying brick after brick of truth and love and grace and limitation so we could find the Way, Truth and Life, even when we made poor choices. The enemy would love to make generational sin an inevitable pattern, a pattern repeated through the open door of unforgiveness. But when I hand my longing for justice to the arms of a just, righteous God, I know all will be made right in the end. Until then, I have faith for the miracle of a strong and loving family – and step out in the obedience that makes miracles come true.

 

“But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children's children, to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments.” - Psalm 103