Wow! This was lit!!!!! People being seen is very powerful hope!!! Intentional not seeing is powerful and withering. I am really happy to read this. My story is a little more about withering, but I think that is an important part about hope. Springing to life looks different for everyone, and what has taken the life out of us that we are springing up from? The truth of these answers is complelling as solutions to being seen and the love shared here is real and healing as Jesus kingdom really is I think, I hope, I suspect and I rejoice though quietly and privately when I see! The question of hope has helped me get a little handle on telling my story and I think more will come. Thank you for this.
My Winter Story of Hope: Emotionally Distant Family History, Chapters of Church Belonging, Facing Past again during loss and Reorienting
Winter is the hardest time of year, when depression yawns before me though mother nature blankets me with coziness, when snow covers mundane landscapes in a world of imagination and glittering ice. It reminds me of both my happiest times in the midst of dealing with family problems with my family of origin when we united against the elements for warmth, survival, and adventure.
The problem of emotional abandonment that I seemed tasked with overcoming was both personal and social. Yes they cared but my feelings were deep and I perceived too much and needed some help. My parents, though they had parried some of their own parents demons did not seem to recognize the chasms of emotional disarray that inhabited my world just as real as the characters in stories that I drew strength and company from.
I think my parents hoped for vindication brought by success, achievement, standing, that every parent should want, but I deeply and intuitively disagreed. Looking back was it reasonable to expect their children to resolve their unhealedness or worse yet, plunge deeper into it which for some reason I would not. I put my hope in authors, artists, scholars and the community of books and I still do. But instead I inherited generations of family pain that only I seemed to be able to see, feel and talk about. I do not know what I would have done without the hope my parents gave me with education, because it was my way out from the things that scared me about them.
I discovered protestantism in my high school years, and this gave me hope in creating a pseudofamily for bonding, healing, and learning many of the things that my own family impasses caused me to despair in. It also gave me hope for problems that had concerned and frightened me both about the world and about my own family. It gave me hope that white people could self-reflective as a family and engage with larger white culture about social issues but without becoming a lone prophet figure like my mother. It gave me hope that as a man, despite the pain my mother felt men had caused her and the exclusion she felt from the world of her artistic aspirations, my masculinity according to religious community was a blessing to myself, my community, and the world. It gave me hope that I would be a parent one day in a different way than my own.
I think I am at the end of that second twenty year chapter that was for me filled with personal victories as well as the privilege to learn from my failures. In this new chapter, which I am just starting to get excited about and it has taken a lot of work of letting go, grieving, reorienting. I am revisiting both the discomforts and embarrassment of solitude and the real modern dangers of isolation that people deal with. I know more now where I begin and where I end, what I can and can’t do, and all of the places and spaces I’ve been. I am discovering the sanctity of who I am, and who I was, before began to read the bible front to back, before I forced myself into the worldviews of individuals who I hoped would show me the way to be myself, belong, and work for what I believe in. I do put my hope in the church to give my children a better childhood than I had, but I no longer think that the resolution of my own experiences is identical to what they need. They will not become the validation of the generational curses that I have broken, but my healed progress will be an ongoing support and strength in their lives and this drives me to continue to heal. I see a shifted perspective of belonging and opportunity to heal core wounds that drove me to church in the first place.
Yet, I am absolutely convinced of my own need for connection and that a feeling of safety deep within is a legacy of how I have been directly and indirectly hurt by some of the force of hostility that is passed down in this world. I see now more how the table keeps being built and rebuilt too small for every people group on the margins and I feel ashamed that I once thought it was cute to place responsibility on LGBTQIA, disabled, black, brown and people of color, to conform in order to belong. I love to be part of groups and communities that find to be as open, supportive, healing, and people first as they can. I am always looking for that everwhere I go and it is my hope to see that and be part of that in this life.
I would like to be able to guide others through these things, so unfortunately I have a mishmashed paradox of being unusually willing to share honestly about my own pain, but not enough insight as though to not be in it. However, my hope is that the truth, not matter how painful, will eventually lead to solutions. I may not have been able to climb out of every pit that I find myself in, and my being sometimes overly aware or self-conscious of being stuck.
Many of us are told that the gospel is made unattractive in our lives if we cannot climb up a little higher on the mountain of making it in this life, and reach out a hand to the person behind us. I may not be higher up financially or socially, but on my little emotional mountain I have some hard won insights to share that can help the story of healing that I am sure I need and though the world feels that is does not need it, I am best able to share when connected with others who have some awareness of their own need and some concern for the world and some willingness to face down their generational unrests and see how it may be connected to larger social concerns.
And I have many other hopes too, but this is closest to heart and home. Thank you for this space and really thorough series on hope to be able to share more soon because I hope my weakness and strength will thaw both other hearts and my own.
Feel like you covered all the women beautifully in this beatitude of hope. Right now, mums dementia cottage is managing a covid spot fire - so yes hope for the hard working predominately women of colour caring for the residents.
I will add Hope for the teachers, the one told to leave the pulpits to the men, to honour their violent husband in the name of Jesus. Hope for the women who stood up instead, whose voices would not be silenced. 💜🙏
Wow! This was lit!!!!! People being seen is very powerful hope!!! Intentional not seeing is powerful and withering. I am really happy to read this. My story is a little more about withering, but I think that is an important part about hope. Springing to life looks different for everyone, and what has taken the life out of us that we are springing up from? The truth of these answers is complelling as solutions to being seen and the love shared here is real and healing as Jesus kingdom really is I think, I hope, I suspect and I rejoice though quietly and privately when I see! The question of hope has helped me get a little handle on telling my story and I think more will come. Thank you for this.
My Winter Story of Hope: Emotionally Distant Family History, Chapters of Church Belonging, Facing Past again during loss and Reorienting
Winter is the hardest time of year, when depression yawns before me though mother nature blankets me with coziness, when snow covers mundane landscapes in a world of imagination and glittering ice. It reminds me of both my happiest times in the midst of dealing with family problems with my family of origin when we united against the elements for warmth, survival, and adventure.
The problem of emotional abandonment that I seemed tasked with overcoming was both personal and social. Yes they cared but my feelings were deep and I perceived too much and needed some help. My parents, though they had parried some of their own parents demons did not seem to recognize the chasms of emotional disarray that inhabited my world just as real as the characters in stories that I drew strength and company from.
I think my parents hoped for vindication brought by success, achievement, standing, that every parent should want, but I deeply and intuitively disagreed. Looking back was it reasonable to expect their children to resolve their unhealedness or worse yet, plunge deeper into it which for some reason I would not. I put my hope in authors, artists, scholars and the community of books and I still do. But instead I inherited generations of family pain that only I seemed to be able to see, feel and talk about. I do not know what I would have done without the hope my parents gave me with education, because it was my way out from the things that scared me about them.
I discovered protestantism in my high school years, and this gave me hope in creating a pseudofamily for bonding, healing, and learning many of the things that my own family impasses caused me to despair in. It also gave me hope for problems that had concerned and frightened me both about the world and about my own family. It gave me hope that white people could self-reflective as a family and engage with larger white culture about social issues but without becoming a lone prophet figure like my mother. It gave me hope that as a man, despite the pain my mother felt men had caused her and the exclusion she felt from the world of her artistic aspirations, my masculinity according to religious community was a blessing to myself, my community, and the world. It gave me hope that I would be a parent one day in a different way than my own.
I think I am at the end of that second twenty year chapter that was for me filled with personal victories as well as the privilege to learn from my failures. In this new chapter, which I am just starting to get excited about and it has taken a lot of work of letting go, grieving, reorienting. I am revisiting both the discomforts and embarrassment of solitude and the real modern dangers of isolation that people deal with. I know more now where I begin and where I end, what I can and can’t do, and all of the places and spaces I’ve been. I am discovering the sanctity of who I am, and who I was, before began to read the bible front to back, before I forced myself into the worldviews of individuals who I hoped would show me the way to be myself, belong, and work for what I believe in. I do put my hope in the church to give my children a better childhood than I had, but I no longer think that the resolution of my own experiences is identical to what they need. They will not become the validation of the generational curses that I have broken, but my healed progress will be an ongoing support and strength in their lives and this drives me to continue to heal. I see a shifted perspective of belonging and opportunity to heal core wounds that drove me to church in the first place.
Yet, I am absolutely convinced of my own need for connection and that a feeling of safety deep within is a legacy of how I have been directly and indirectly hurt by some of the force of hostility that is passed down in this world. I see now more how the table keeps being built and rebuilt too small for every people group on the margins and I feel ashamed that I once thought it was cute to place responsibility on LGBTQIA, disabled, black, brown and people of color, to conform in order to belong. I love to be part of groups and communities that find to be as open, supportive, healing, and people first as they can. I am always looking for that everwhere I go and it is my hope to see that and be part of that in this life.
I would like to be able to guide others through these things, so unfortunately I have a mishmashed paradox of being unusually willing to share honestly about my own pain, but not enough insight as though to not be in it. However, my hope is that the truth, not matter how painful, will eventually lead to solutions. I may not have been able to climb out of every pit that I find myself in, and my being sometimes overly aware or self-conscious of being stuck.
Many of us are told that the gospel is made unattractive in our lives if we cannot climb up a little higher on the mountain of making it in this life, and reach out a hand to the person behind us. I may not be higher up financially or socially, but on my little emotional mountain I have some hard won insights to share that can help the story of healing that I am sure I need and though the world feels that is does not need it, I am best able to share when connected with others who have some awareness of their own need and some concern for the world and some willingness to face down their generational unrests and see how it may be connected to larger social concerns.
And I have many other hopes too, but this is closest to heart and home. Thank you for this space and really thorough series on hope to be able to share more soon because I hope my weakness and strength will thaw both other hearts and my own.
Thank you for presence 🙏🏾
Feel like you covered all the women beautifully in this beatitude of hope. Right now, mums dementia cottage is managing a covid spot fire - so yes hope for the hard working predominately women of colour caring for the residents.
I will add Hope for the teachers, the one told to leave the pulpits to the men, to honour their violent husband in the name of Jesus. Hope for the women who stood up instead, whose voices would not be silenced. 💜🙏
Amen 🙏🏾 And hope for your mum and her daughter:)
Thank you with gratitude 🙏🏻🤍💚💚💚