Healing Old Wounds

Do any of you really miss the old 80s and 90s family centered sit coms? There’s something oddly satisfying about watching fictional but relatable family dysfunction set to the resounding refrain of a laugh track to help distract us from our own reality.

The family centered sit com is still successful now today as well. And I think that is because it is just so darn relatable. The drama, the comedy, the sweet moments. It reminds us of our own experience or pulls at longing of our hearts for what we had once hoped we would have.

Sometimes its a moment like this that confronts us with the bitter reality that family relationships have a lasting effect on who we become: (play fresh prince clip)

I’m not crying. You’re crying. I’m sorry for the d words and the h words in there but I they are both in the Bible so we are good I think.

What we see here is the breakdown of what is supposed to be the most supportive and most developmentally important relationships that we all experience in life. The family relationship.

We’re in the 3rd week of our series “A Part of Your World” where we are looking at relationships and how it is that we find a place to belong in this world. Our guide for this journey is called the “concentric circles of belonging” which you can see here. Each circle represents and ever widening level of relationships that we all experience as a part of being human. They are all interconnected and they are all important. The health of each matters, and impacts our ability to have healthy relationships at all levels.

So last week we talked about the divine relationship — particularly focusing on prayer as the tool to cultivate and remain in a healthy relationship with God. Did you all do the thing? Say the Lord’s prayer everyday… bonus points if you said it before your talked to anyone else!

Today we are moving out to the next circle — the circle of family. Family is the first place that we belong in life — and for many it is a blessing and for many not so much. That’s the reality of family. Some of us grow up in Full house families and some of us grow up in Married with Children families. Or to be even more dramatic, some of us grow up in 7th Heaven families and some of us its more like Shameless from Showtime.

Regardless, our family of no choice has a deep impact on how we interact with the world outside of our families. The writer of proverbs put it this way:

Proverbs 22:6 NRSV

Train children in the right way, and when old, they will not stray.

Basically thousands of years ago they had figured out that the way the family functions is fundamental and foundational. Which begs the question:

Why is there like not a single functional family to behold in the entirety of scripture? Even Jesus’s family was dysfunctional. Probably the worst offender though, the one that had the largest and most lasting impact was this one:

There’s this guy named Isaac. His father was Abraham — like father Abraham the guy that God called out of Babylon at the beginning of this Israel project. And Isaac had 2 sons, twins actually. Esau was born first and Isaac loved him more. His barely younger brother Jacob was always second best. And he knew it. He knew that his dad loved his older brother more and he knew that it meant he was not going to have the same chance at life that his big brother would have because of it. This was just the way of things. But then this happened:

Genesis 27:1–10 NRSV

When Isaac was old and his eyes were dim so that he could not see, he called his elder son Esau and said to him, “My son”; and he answered, “Here I am.” He said, “See, I am old; I do not know the day of my death. Now then, take your weapons, your quiver and your bow, and go out to the field, and hunt game for me. Then prepare for me savory food, such as I like, and bring it to me to eat, so that I may bless you before I die.” Now Rebekah was listening when Isaac spoke to his son Esau. So when Esau went to the field to hunt for game and bring it, Rebekah said to her son Jacob, “I heard your father say to your brother Esau, ‘Bring me game, and prepare for me savory food to eat, that I may bless you before the Lord before I die.’ Now therefore, my son, obey my word as I command you. Go to the flock, and get me two choice kids, so that I may prepare from them savory food for your father, such as he likes; and you shall take it to your father to eat, so that he may bless you before he dies.”

And that’s what happens. And it messes things up bad for Esau and for the relationship between the brothers. But that’s not where the mess ends. You see Jacob would go on to have his own sons. And you’d think he would have learned something about the pain it causes children to play the game of favoritism…

But Jacob chooses a son to love more than all of his other sons. A young boy named Joseph. And Joseph’s brothers were so envious and so furious of this reality that they sold their little brother into slavery, where eventually he ended up in Egypt. And by strange twists of fate, all of Jacobs family — the people who would become the nation of Israel — ended up in Egypt. And that did not go well for them.

These wounded family relationships carried over across generations and had widespread impact.

So if you’re sitting here thinking “man my family situation is not that great” just know that the Bible is like filled with situations like Jacob and his family. But here’s the deal — family drama and family trauma doesn’t have to continue on beyond you. It can be healed. In fact it must be healed if we are going to function successfully in any other layer of relationship.

This is because the family unit is what helps us form the way that we attach ourselves in relationships. And the way that we attach ourselves in relationships determines whether or not those relationships are healthy or toxic.

Drs. Tim Clinton and Gary Sibcy have coined the term “attachment styles” that you can see represented here in this chart:

Secure Attachement Style

I am worthy of Love

I am capable of getting the love and support I need

Others are willing and able to love me

Avoidant Attachment Style

I am worthy of Love

I am capable of getting the love and support I need

Others are either unwilling or incapable of loving me

Others are not trustworthy, they are unreliable when it comes to meeting my needs

Ambivalent Attachment Style

I am not worthy of Love

I am not capable of getting the love I need without being angry and clingy

Others are capable of meeting my needs but might not do so because of my flaws

Others are trustworthy and reliable but might abandon me because of my worthlessness

Disorganized Attachment Style

I am not worthy of love

I am not capable of getting the love i need without being angry and clingy

Others are unable to meet my needs

Others are not trustworthy or reliable

Others are abusive and I deserve it

You can probably see easily that one of these is the healthy ideal and the others are not.

When we have either a negative view of our selves or a negative view of others then we can never enter into a relationship — family, friend, whatever — with proper expectations and proper levels of trust. We will always be looking to heal part of ourselves without actually addressing what is broken.

So, if we’ve grown up and don’t exhibit what would be considered a secure attachment type… what can we do? How do we heal?

Well it begins with acknowledging the source of our brokenness — no matter how painful. And for some of us this is just getting honest about all the things that we grew up with that we’ve told ourselves are in the past and don’t matter any more. For others it might mean like really deep and guided trauma work with a mental health professional in a safe environment.

But recognizing that it happened to us doesn’t change it. Recognizing that it happened only opens us up to the opportunity to change. And we’ve got to allow that change to happen.

You saw how this happened for Will right? He went from indifference to anger to facing the sad truth in a matter of 2 minutes. But what does he open himself up to at the very end — the loving embrace of the father that had actually been there for him for most of his life. His Uncle Phil.

We seek an even deeper source and rock. We seek the arms of the God who has always been there. We fall back on the divine relationship to get a healthy dose of reality about who we are and who others all. We rest in the God revealed to us in Christ Jesus — who dealt with dysfunction all over the place — and continued to overcome it with perfect reconciling love.

2 Corinthians 5:17–21 NRSV

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

We don’t get to go back in time and fix the family we grew up in. We don’t get to go back in time and fix the family that maybe we had a hand in messing up. If you’re still working on your family like me, well we get to think about this for a while.

But each and every one of us can take responsibility for how our family relationships drive our ability to love one another. Each and every one of us can do the work of healing by allowing the great physician in and resting in his arms. Each and every one of us can be people of reconciliation.

So here’s what we are going to do this week. Keep saying the Lord’s prayer every morning, but as you do pray for that one person that hurt you the most in your life — even if they aren’t with us any more. Pray for their soul and if there is unforgiveness there — pray for the ability to forgive. Do this and watch how the healing begins.