{"id":924,"date":"2009-11-08T18:18:03","date_gmt":"2009-11-08T23:18:03","guid":{"rendered":"170818376"},"modified":"2009-11-08T18:18:03","modified_gmt":"2009-11-08T23:18:03","slug":"today-the-gathering-my-family-tree-gave-me-splinters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/today-the-gathering-my-family-tree-gave-me-splinters\/","title":{"rendered":"Today @ The Gathering – “My Family Tree Gave Me Splinters”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Today @ The Gathering<\/a> We continued our current series, \u201cThey Promised Me Chocolate\u201d with installment number 3, \u201cMy Family Tree Gave Me Splinters.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the most difficult realities new face in life is that it seems as if the very people at the core of our lives, those who we should be able to trust with our well-being are sometimes the first ones who disappoint us.<\/p>\n

It is true that the closer you let a person into your life, the more they are able to hurt you, because the closer they are to you, the more you open up to them.<\/p>\n

We gave three reasons today why family is so hard to get right.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. You can\u2019t fix them<\/strong>.\u00a0 You are born into a family of damaged people.\u00a0 You marry a damaged person.\u00a0 You have children who get damaged.\u00a0 And when you wake up and realize you can\u2019t fix yourself, much less them, life gets interesting.<\/li>\n
  2. You can\u2019t fire them. <\/strong> You can\u2019t send them away because they\u2019re your family.\u00a0 You can\u2019t give them a pink-slip and tell them not to come back because they are forever connected to you because they\u2019re your family: in-laws, outlaws, aunts, uncles, cousins.\u00a0 And your damaged family grows as your damaged family members marry damaged people.<\/li>\n
  3. You can\u2019t free yourself from their influence. <\/strong> This is one of the hardest things to get over, and that is to face the fact that our families pass onto us a lot of the wounded-ness and damage that they themselves bear.\u00a0 And so the journey to health and well-being is a challenge because we\u2019re constantly having to face not only our own issues, but many times deal with those issues through the lens of our weird families.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    We talked about the four ways in which we tend to pass on our hurt and wounded-ness to our children.<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. We tend to pass on our habits. <\/strong> For example if you smoke, it\u2019s useless to tell your children not to smoke because they tend to imitate what their parents do.\u00a0 If you have a habit of flying off the handle and becoming emotional, they would tend to do the very same thing.<\/li>\n
    2. We tend to pass on our hang-ups.<\/strong> Children aren\u2019t born prejudiced.\u00a0 They catch it from their parents.\u00a0 And their parents caught it from their parents, and it begins to spread.<\/li>\n
    3. We tend to pass on our hurts.<\/strong> It\u2019s an interesting fact of life that the hurt we receive<\/em> from those who are closest to us we tend to pass on<\/em> to those who are closest to us.<\/li>\n
    4. We tend to pass on our history.<\/strong> Not only is it the habits of our parents, but the habits of our grandparents and our family tree.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      The challenge is to break that cycle, to free yourself from the bondage of the past, from the heritage that you received that you did nothing to create.\u00a0 And while it\u2019s not just as simple as these three things, there\u2019s something that you can start today to break the bondage of a bad heritage.<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. At home I will be a healer<\/strong>, which is the never sour<\/em> piece of our Bulldog Principle.\u00a0 Remember, life will consistently and without warning let you down and so will your family.\u00a0 But God never will.\u00a0 As I begin to trust Him with my family issues, I refuse to become bitter, sour, and cynical.\u00a0 How do I do that?\u00a0 I make a commitment with my words and my attitudes that I will be a healer at all times.\u00a0 I\u2019ll ask myself, \u201cAre these healing words? Is this a healing thing to do?\u00a0 Will everyone win if I take this course of action?\u201d<\/li>\n
      2. I will be an encourager<\/strong> which is the never settle<\/em> piece.\u00a0 I will constantly spur on my children, my in-laws and outlaws and encourage them.\u00a0 I\u2019ll encourage them to aim high, dream big, and trust God for a big life, to never settle for second-best or half-hearted efforts.\u00a0\u00a0 It should be our family who are our greatest cheerleaders.\u00a0 Often though, the sad truth is, they are not.\u00a0 I will break this bondage.\u00a0 I will be a healer with my words and attitudes, and I will be an encourager.<\/li>\n
      3. I will be a bridge-builder<\/strong>, which means I will constantly be a source of reconciliation.\u00a0 As the Scriptures say, \u201cBe devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.\u00a0 Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, this is how you serve God.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        Your family tree may have given you splinters.\u00a0 You may be living today with deep disappointments, wounds and dysfunctions that were handed down by your family.\u00a0 But you can break that cycle right now by re-centering your life; not with your family and their dysfunction, but with God, His goodness, and His grace that is extended to you in this moment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        Today @ The Gathering We continued our current series, \u201cThey Promised Me Chocolate\u201d with installment number 3, \u201cMy Family Tree Gave Me Splinters.\u201d One of the most difficult realities new face in life is that it seems as if the very people at the core of our lives, those who we should be able to … Continue reading “Today @ The Gathering – “My Family Tree Gave Me Splinters””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"series":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=924"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}