Through the eyes of a 7 year old boy...

I was one of the "other woman's" kids.  My mom was raising us, and she was doing the best job she could, thank God.  When I was 7, I had a vision of family.  I had a vision of marriage.  I had a vision of friendship.  I got these visions from the shows I watched when I was little.  I watched Leave it to Beaver, The Adam's Family, The Munsters, and Gilligan's Island.  They all were great models of family, friendship, and in three of the four shows, marriage.  I gathered how a man should act, what a man should say, and how he should treat his kids and wife from those shows.  I loved those shows.

Coming from a broken, but blessed, family, I looked at fatherhood and marriage and two great blessings that I was going to "do right," just like in the shows.  I wanted to have a wife and a family that I loved and took care of like the men in those shows.  I KNEW that I was going to be able to do it just like the men in those shows, to care for my wife and family and be a role model that they loved and looked up to.

But no one told me how addicting sex would be.  No one told me how weak my flesh would be.  No one told me about lust.  No one told me about how hard it would be to fight my own mind and thoughts and desires.  No one explained to me that life, REAL-IN-COLOR life, is anything but easy.  No one told me that my own mind and body would be nothing short of my own greatest enemy.

As much as I fail, though, God is good.  He forgives me and loves me and is working on me.  I'm not perfect and I do fail, as many of you have seen firsthand, but regardless of how I've failed, God has always given me another last chance.  God is good.  He is strong.  He is love.  He can mend anything that we break.  But we have to let Him.  We have to want to mend it and allow His love and forgiveness to correct and rebuild us.  It's not easy.  I will fail again, one way or another, because my flesh is still fighting against what I know is right and perfect and good.  I want so bad to do what is good, right, and perfect.  But, I am not perfect...but my God is.  So I will keep coming to Him with a broken and humble heart, asking for my Father to love me and show me once again, how to love my wife and my boys and not fail them.  I will keep trying to be that Godly man and role model that my kids want to be when they grow up.  I want to model a Godly life of love, forgiveness, and repentance for them to be able to desire the same thing I desire now.

Parlon de ma génération...

I come from a broken generation.  A generation filled with broken children who have all grown up looking for love from other broken children.  I am one of them.  I look around me and I see some of my CHRISTIAN family exhibiting just how broken we really are, as they fall apart, while still searching out the face of our Father in heaven.  I see families just crumble, for reasons that I'm not privy to, but ultimately, because we're broken.  We all want to love and to be loved and to feel like we're the most important thing in someone's life.  I know I do...at least there's a part of me that does...we search and we try and we keep going until we feel like we've found it.  But being broken, we never quite acheive it...and we can't see it.   Its not easy, at all...even me, my friends, family, and loved ones know that I'm broken.  They know that I come from a very broken background and that I'm broken to a good degree.  That my desire to be loved and wanted is a large motivating factor in decisions I've made in the past.

Does this mean that I'm not trying to serve God? No.  I want to serve Him the way He wants me to...its just that my brokeness will lead me astray if I falter in my walk with God.  And I will falter, because I am human...but I DO love my Father, and wish only to be His child, because in the end, He is the only true and pure source of love.  He truly IS the only love that satisfies and fulfills.  He is the only one that will not fail or leave us broken.

Sigh...I look around me and all I see is children who want to be loved.  Broken children of broken parents who didn't really know what they were doing.  But the greatest good that they could've done, and hopefully DID do, was pointing us to our Father who loves us more than anything in this world could ever pretend to.  My friends, we are broken...but we are not unloved.  We may feel alone, but we are not abandoned.  My heart is sad at all the brokeness I see and feel...but filled with hope at the thought that our very brokeness could bring us in fellowship with our loving Father.

There's so much more I want to say...but the words just won't come.  God help us to see Your love through our brokeness.
 My precious little boy...