The Family of Peace

“The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together ~Erma Bombeck

As we struggle as a family to maintain identity and to be heard over the roar of each other's story we arrive to an all familiar place, one of humility. A place of recognizing that just maybe, their part of the story is the plot line. Maybe what I am feeling, what I am experiencing is subtext in light of the struggles that others are going through.

I find it important to ask those uncomfortable reflective questions, "Have I taken the time to read between the lines of what my mate is feeling?" "Are my children REALLY trying to get on my last nerve, which I thought I so cleverly hid, or just maybe, they have yet to become adept at their own self expression using actions rather than words to communicate discontentment, insecurity, anger, or dare they....love.

I find with teens that I spend time with during lunch, they are quick to open up to someone who is willing to take the time to validate what they feel and to identify that yes, those ARE real feelings not the whims of teenage angst or emotions with no control. What appears so often as anger, is in fact, insecurity. What boils over in sarcasm is an effort to keep from "feeling" some thing, be it hurt or self loathing. One teens writes, "If anger, hurt, and self loathing were but tender morsels, I would die, myself the glutton." The thought of choking on our own emotions is a difficult one and I am thankful, and hopeful even that there are those, like my wife willing to brave the elements to bring them to a refuge.

When is the last time YOU became a refuge for your kids? When is the last time that your children felt your home was a place to look for peace? Where they find peace, where they find refuge, where they find acceptance will dictate what they will become passionate about.