If you know exactly who your dad is, never saw him hit your mom, never saw him waste away in a drunken stupor right before your eyes, always knew that he would make sure none of you starved to death and that he looked so mysteriously cool and aloof all the time that you could tell everybody that he’s a secret agent (and they’d believe you), you were like me… Lucky. You just couldn’t count on him for much else though.
He had a wife and kids when he met my mom, left them to be with her (to bring me into this world) then recently met someone else and now he’s gone. Pretty simple, if you look at it like that. Just a string of broken homes in the wake of one man’s pursuit of happiness.
These days, more and more young people just like me, find themselves staring point blank in the face of the scariest thing since being a teenager… Being a teenager with broken parents. Whether they’re constantly at each other’s throats, they’re separated, they’re filing for divorce, one of them has an addiction or has to serve jail time, your whole world seems to fall apart because only then do you realize how much of it they really held up.
It’s always good to talk to someone about it, but at the time, I really hated talking about it with people like Chloe, whose parents were so happily married. I couldn’t help visiting them all the time though. It’s a lot like being on the Cosby show and all the characters got replaced. It kept me from thinking that all marriages are doomed to fail and that disorder was the new natural order of the 21st century.
Take it from a girl whose been there, done that, got the t-shirt and sold it. The most ALPHA way to handle the situation is to:
1. Understand that this is not a declaration of war amongst family members. Know exactly what it is you’re fighting and I’m telling you it’s not your mother or father, it’s their problem. (Ephesians 6:10-17)
2. When you can’t find it anywhere else, the best comfort is in the Lord. (Psalm 121)
3. It may be difficult (and trust me I know) but you still need to honor your parents because strife and enmity works against you in the end. It’s like you gulping down the poison and expecting your enemy to drop dead. (Ephesians 6:2-3)
4. Decide that you will learn from this and then cut off whatever the issue is from occurring in your own family one day by deciding to do things completely differently. Don’t live out the same tragedy that scarred your childhood in your adulthood because these are the makings of generational bondages, legacies of pain and a heritage of misfortune. You have been set apart. You are a new creation. You are ALPHA. (2 Corinthians 5:17)
5. Know that you WILL get through this and you will come out of the other end better than you were when you came in! (Romans 8:37-39)
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