Having grown up in a "non-traditional" family I've often allowed myself to fall into despair about what the future holds for my own home. I experienced my childhood between every-other weekends and talk of child support and alimony. Thankfully, I also continued concerning myself with Barbies, days at the creek, and neighborhood kickball games... my childhood was certainly not all lost.
Today's meditation from In Conversation with God (Francis Fernandez... highly recommended) reminds us "We should never forget the first thing Jesus chose to sanctify was the home." A reminder that brought me to tears as I read it from my pew at the Cathedral this evening. My tears were not out of sadness or self pity (although that would not have been out of the ordinary) but instead from a place of deep gratitude. Gratitude for the gift that is family. The gift of having all your siblings around the dinner table. The gift of being able to help your dad in the garage. The gift of offering your sister 5 more minutes in your home's only bathroom
. The gift of all pitching in to prepare for company. These are gifts that I was still given despite the brokenness that existed. Gifts that are such if we continue looking for them and inviting them in.
My tears of gratitude were also directed at the plans God has for me "plans for welfare and not for harm... a future with hope." Plans that can't so easily be snatched away- not even by a tarnished home life. At least not if He is allowed to be the one in charge.
It is true Jesus did and
does sanctify the home- whether the home were you live with both your parents or just one. In our home He gives us, like no other place, a school for virtue. There we are constantly being invited to charity, compassion, patience, and cheerfulness.
In his reflection on today's Gospel Archbishop Chaput pointed out that just after Jesus tells His disciples about the indissolubility of marriage He firmly reminds them of their need to be like little children. This is no coincidence. To be like little children, those in Jesus' time, is precisely what we all need to do. We all need to recognize ourselves as being without status, unimportant, and as not being owed a single thing. With that attitude we can truly accept that which God gives us from His loving hand. Even if it is a family or home that is broken...difficult...wounded...
That reality that Jesus chose to sanctify the family before anything else is joyful and hope-filled. For those of us who are striving to see how God will make strait the crooked paths of our families' pasts we can know that He wasn't excluding us when he decided to pour graces and blessings upon the home. He did not only choose to sanctify the perfect families, but the jacked up ones as well. He withholds His goodness from no one and makes available His love for us all.
It is within the home that we are first invited to love as God loves- without limits- even if the home is cracked or crumbling.
Instead of being homesick at the thought of what I've missed I'm going to lift my eyes up to the hills and wait for the help that comes from the Lord, who chose to first sanctify the home- the place which prepares us for our eternal home.
Today marks one month of sewing at Emily Griffith Opportunity School. Every week I spend three hours in the basement of an old school reminiscent of a sitcom high school- complete with swinging double doors, long halls laden with encouraging posters (Everyone makes mistakes, that's why pencils have erasers), and a line out the door at the counselor's office. Yup, it's all the same... except for the shadows on the walls from the sparks of a blow torch (Welding 101), oh, and the manikin head eerily facing the street as you walk by (Hairstyling 101)...and I almost forgot, the fact that there are only about 50 of us in the entire school which is built for hundreds... except all of that it's exactly the same.