There's Hope for Your Family Yet // How to Stop Your Family from Falling Apart, Part 4

With families falling apart left, right and centre, it’s all too easy to look at our family and imagine that it’s beyond the point of no return. But that doesn’t have to be the case. God is on your side – and the time to act, to bring your family back together isn’t tomorrow. It’s… now!

Forgive Past Wrongs

Here’s the thing about the people in our families. We generally know them better than anyone else does. Why? Because we live with them. Most of us can put up a facade that will fool people out there – but none of us is capable of maintaining that façade 24/7 – at home. Eventually, at home – who we really are, comes to the fore.

The people in our families, know our strengths and weaknesses like nobody else. You may listen to my smooth voice and imagine that I have it all together. My wife could tell you otherwise. I try my best, but I’m far from perfect, just the way that you’re far from perfect.

So – we see all the strengths and weaknesses of the other members of our family. But because we live with these people, their weaknesses and failures and limitations – even just their differences, the ways in which they’re different from us – become like Chinese water torture. Here’s how Chinese water torture works.

Back in the 15^th and 16^th centuries Christianityworks, AD, they would tie a subject down, immobilise him, and then drop water on his forehead.  They’d vary the timing and intensity without warning, and this would go on for days. Eventually, it felt like there was a brick falling on the victims head – it became completely unbearable. 

It was the constancy, repetitiveness and unpredictability of the drips that caused the victim such great distress.  Just simple small drips of water became totally unbearable. And that is what, so often, happens with the weaknesses and failures of the people we live with.

I was having coffee with a man recently and he was telling me something that his wife had done which drove him, the other day, into a complete fit of rage. He’d had enough. He just couldn’t take it anymore. Now the thing that his wife did, in and of itself, wasn’t such a big deal. But they’ve been married for going onto 30 years, and she’s been doing it all that time.

It’s the Chinese water torture thing. You see? I wonder, what are the things that some of your family members do over and over again, that drive you to anger and despair all at the same time. Often they’re just little things. For instance, I’m one of these people who has a place for everything and puts everything back in its place. Seems obvious to me. That way, next time I need it, I’ll know where to find it.

My wife and my daughter aren’t like that. It doesn’t seem important to them, to put the sharp kitchen knives back into the knife block in the same order, so that when you reach for the one second from the top, you get a carving knife, not a bread knife. It doesn’t seem important when they borrow a pen from the penholder in my study, to put it back again, so that I’ll have something to write with, next time I reach for a pen.

Now, that doesn’t make them bad people. They’re not. Love them both, and truly, they have strengths and abilities that I will never have. There are things that I fail to do – that they simply can’t understand.  But this whole knife and pen thing – as small as those things are – used to drive me absolutely around the twist. How can they not get it? Well, they don’t and they probably never will because… they’re different to me.

So – here’s my choice.  Seems to me that there are 3 options here: Option 1 is to continue to get angry with them and tell them what a bad job they’re doing at being a wife and a daughter. Option 2, is to hold my tongue, say nothing but still harbour that anger and resentment inside. And Option 3 is to forgive them immediately and completely.

Which one do you think is the best option? Pretty obvious isn’t it. Option 1 is going to tear us apart. Option 2 is going to tear me apart. Option 3 is going to promote family harmony and let’s face it, which slot in the knife block the knives go in is hardly a big issue, is it? And I do have other pens in the top drawer of my study desk when all is said and done.

These examples may seem trivial to you. And they are, but they have the potential to create a lot of conflict in our household. And I’m guessing that you have some things – equally trivial, equally inconsequential – that set you off too. And because they’ve been done by your family members over and over and over again, you are so sensitive to them, that when they happen, you could just about scream. Am I right? I’m pretty sure I am.

What is it that your family members do (or don’t do) to you that make you want to scream? Come on, just think about them now. You’ll know what they are in an instant because you’re so attuned to them. It’s like you’re almost waiting for it to happen again at any moment, right? So when those things happen the next time, which option are you going to choose:

Option 1 – get angry with them (again!!) and tell them what a bad job they’re doing. Option 2 – hold your tongue and say nothing, but let the anger and resentment build up inside you. Or…. Option 3 – forgive them immediately and completely. Which one will it be? And when you choose that option – what will the consequences of your choice be?

Here’s the reason that unforgiveness is so toxic in a family context. Because it’s cumulative, like the Chinese water torture. Each drip, drop, drip… magnifies the impact on you and the consequences of your actions. And that unforgiveness – each time it happens – it’s like… like wedges being driven between family members, slowly and inexorably tearing them apart.

Before you know it – this family that should be a close-knit, loving unit – is a collection of warring tribes, with no love, or common purpose or sense of family left that anybody can discern at a safe distance.  So if unforgiveness is tearing your family apart. There’s just one place for you to begin.

Begin by forgiving people instantly – in fact, you can even forgive them in advance, anticipating the next drip in the water torture, and even before it comes, neutralising its effect on you. Forgiveness based on tolerance is what keeps families together. Forgiveness – your own, and your example that others will surely model and follow – is what’s going to stop your family from falling apart.

Jesus said this:

Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbour, Let me take the speck out of your eye, while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye. (Matt 7:1–5)

He’s absolutely right isn’t He? This precisely describes the pattern of unforgiveness that goes on in our families. We behave on the premise that we’re wrong, and they’re right – not realising that we ourselves, have a distorted view of things.

This whole forgiveness thing starts with us. It starts with us examining our own flawed judgements and reactions. How can we judge others and conclude that they’re wrong, simply because God wired them differently on the inside? How can an encourager judge a leader – and conclude that the leader is flawed, just because she’s not an encourager?

That’s exactly what we do in our families and we build up layers of unforgiveness, simply because God’s made that family member who’s annoying us different from us. And those layers of unforgiveness tear families apart.

Want to stop your family falling apart. Then forgive them quickly and completely – and all of a sudden – you mark my words – they’ll see the wisdom in that and start doing the same. That’s how you stop your family from falling apart.

Hope for the Future

Well, over these few messages we’ve been talking about how to stop families from falling apart. And here’s the thing with this whole marriage breakdown and family breakdown thing. It doesn’t happen overnight.

Nobody gets married with the aim of having their marriage fail. Nobody brings children into the world with the intent of seeing them grow up and leave the family never to return. Nobody nurtures a family, with the express intent of seeing it disintegrate in front of their very eyes do they?

Families don’t fall apart overnight. It’s a gradual process. It begins with distractions – other things, seemingly important things, even apparently good things, start to crowd out our family times together. And so we go our different ways and then, we don’t connect as often or as deeply as we used to.

Before you know it, the members of our family  – yours and mine – we’re all living separate lives.  Now – as kids grow up, they’re meant to have their own lives. And it’s good for a husband and a wife to have some different interests, things that they do apart as well as together.

All those things are fine until we stop connecting on a deeper, emotional level. Why do we do that? Because we’re tired. Because we’re distracted and sometimes, because connecting with people we love, hurts. What – love hurts? Sure it does! Whenever we love an imperfect person, that person is going to hurt us. Whenever we’re loved by another – because we’re imperfect – we’re going to hurt them.

And after a while, those hurts become deeper and deeper – we talked about that whole Chinese water torture effect the other day on the program. And so we retreat into our shell – an hide from the hurt. And there you have it. Instead of connecting with our loved ones on a deep emotional level, we now have a family that’s disconnected. We now have a family that is ready, to fall apart. In fact, the process is already well underway.

Talking about this stuff – I am so deeply conscious that some people have recently been through that and some may well be travelling down that painful road at the moment. Or perhaps your adult children are going through it at the moment in their families. When families fall apart it is deeply, deeply painful. And here’s the reason why.

Because a man and a woman, when they fall in love and get married – have hopes and dreams for their future together. They start their marriage with a great sense of anticipation. When they bring their children into the world, they have hopes and dreams for them too. And all of a sudden when we come to that point of realising that our family – not someone else’s – our family is on the road to destruction – that realisation robs us of our hopes and dreams.

There is nothing so devastating as to see your hopes and dreams lying shattered at your feet. I know – because I’ve been there. Many years ago now – but I remember that sense of hopelessness as though it were yesterday. Of all the pains and hurts that I’ve experienced in my life, hopelessness is by far the worst by a country mile.

Whilst we live in the here and now, today – we’re always looking forward to the future. And when the things we’d been hoping for in our futures start to look unattainable, it’s completely devastating.

So – what do you do when that happens? Do you give up? A lot of people do. A lot of people simply resign themselves to the fact that their marriage is going to fall apart. Or, in cultures where husband and wife are not likely to divorce, they resign themselves to a lifelong marriage of separation and isolation.

In a sense, it’s the impending sense of failure of a family, that causes too many people to withdraw their efforts to hold their family together, way, way too early. What I have to say now is specifically for anyone whose family has fallen apart, is in the process of falling apart or will one day start falling apart. And it comes from Martin Luther King Jr. who once said:

"Only in the darkness can you see the stars."

When the night is the darkest, that’s the time that you will discover the stars – the treasures in your family relationships that are worth saving. So many people in those dark places, give up their hope for their family. They stop fighting to keep it together. They go the way of convenience –as we do in a disposable world – instead of the hard road of fighting tooth and nail to keep their family together.

If you are in a dark night at the moment with your family – I want to tell you this – do not give up hope. The Apostle had more than most of us to be hopeless about. The guy  – he walked a tough road. People tried to kill him. He was imprisoned, flogged, beaten. HE was shipwrecked, bitten by a viper and then he spent years on death row – finally to be executed.  This is what he writes about hope:

Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. (Romans 12:12)

Hope is that thing that lives in our hearts that believes in a better tomorrow. And when we see those precious stars in that inky black night in which we live – hope is what drives our behaviour. If we give up hope – we stop doing all the things we can do to keep our family together. When we give up hope, we stop connecting, we stop sacrificing, we stop forgiving, we stop encouraging, we stop loving.

In a very real sense – the moment you stop hoping for better things for your family – your hopelessness is driving one nail after the other in the coffin of your family relationships.

But the opposite is also true. In the face of a family that looks like it’s falling apart, in that place where it looks as though your hopes and dreams are being shattered, your future is being destroyed, you can continue to hope for better things. You can look at your wife or husband and think to yourself – they are so precious to me. I know it’s not going well at the moment – but I believe that I can make a difference here.

And so your hope starts to drive the thoughts and attitudes and actions that will bring your family together. When the night is dark, whatever you do, don’t give up your hope in your family.

Because God is a God of hope. Interesting, whenever the Bible talks about hope – the original Hebrew and Greek words that it uses doesn’t mean an uncertain hope, rather it means a certain hope. An uncertain hope is something like – Oh, I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow.  But that’s not what God means when He talks to us about hope.

Because when it comes to your family, there’s one thing for certain, God is in the business of keeping it together. And the most powerful thing that you and I can do when we begin to notice our families drifting apart, is to place our hope in God. To take our family to Him in prayer – to pray for our marriage, our children – and ask Him to make a difference.

Lord show me what I can do – and Lord please do the things that I can’t do.

From the very beginning, God took a man and a woman and brought them together to be cleaved to one another, joined in such beautiful intimacy as to become one flesh – and in so doing, to bring children into this world. What a wondrously beautiful, stunningly magnificent plan. And this very same God will fight tooth and nail with you to keep your family together.

Friend, if your family is going through a rough patch, place your hope in Him and let that hope – the certain hope you have in His grace and mercy and power – drive your attitudes, your thoughts and your actions. And as Moses said to God’s People:

Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you. (Deut 31:6)

The Time for Action... Is Now

So many of us allow the important things to drift because we have so many urgent things that crowd out the important ones. But the truth is, that not all of the things that appear to be urgent, are.

You may have heard some of our recent messages in a series called "Healthy Living To a Ripe Old Age."  And I shared how for many years, I ignored my diet, I did precious little exercise, I became quite obese and I was really headed on down a well-worn path, to an early grave. My father died of complications related to diabetes, at the relatively young age of 74.

I was headed the same way. I told myself I was too busy to exercise. I told myself I travelled too much, and it was too hard to control my diet. And so in my mind, I swept the whole issue of health, diet and exercise under the carpet and kidded myself that I was just fine. The results of that stupidity, had I allowed it to continue, carrying an extra 25 kgs or 55 lbs of fat on my body – would, eventually, have been catastrophic.

The same is true of our family life. We kid ourselves that it's not really a problem working all hours, neglecting the simple pleasures with our family. Eating meals together. Having fun together. Praying together. We kid ourselves that we can hold grudges and unforgiveness in our hearts towards our so-called loved ones and it won’t really make a difference.

And all the while, the members of this precious family are drifting apart, until one day, you realise that – for all intents and purposes – you’re not really a family anymore.  Let me put it quietly, yet plainly and directly – so that you can make no mistake here. If your family is drifting apart, like the pieces of ice at one of the poles as the warmer months approach – if your family is on a course to destruction – then you have to start doing something now. Now is the time for action.

Now is the time to admit that there is something terribly wrong. Now is the time to take the initiative and begin to do the things that we’ve been talking about on the program. Because God doesn’t want YOUR family to be the one that falls apart in your street. God wants your family to be the place that brings glory to Him. That shows other people what families should be like. At some point we need to choose – is our family life going to honour God or not? It’s one or the other. We can’t be wishy washy about it. Joshua 24:15:

Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.

Friend – which one is it going to be? Please stop kidding yourself. If your family is drifting apart, if you can see it happening, if in your heart of hearts you know it’s happening – then eventually, if you don’t do anything about it, if you don’t seize the initiative, it’s going to fall apart. It’s as simple as that.

And the pain and suffering of a family that falls apart simply isn’t worth it. It just isn’t. Trust me. If we stand by and do nothing – no matter what role we have in our family – parent or child, brother or sister, grandfather or grandmother – if we just knowingly watch it happen and let it happen, then to be truthful, we have blood on our hands.

We are as guilty as the rest of them in letting it happen. But it doesn’t have to be that way. As we’ve seen in this series, the power of God is on your side, as you set about doing the simple things that you can do to start bringing your family back together again. Because Families are God’s idea. They have been right from the beginning. They reflect the very nature of God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – living together in perfect unity for all eternity. God wants your family to thrive and to prosper and to be a loving place of safety, compassion and comfort. That’s God’s will for your family. When we do our bit, God will certainly step in and do His. So… what’s it going to be?