Being Home When Home is Hard
March 25, 2020. By Daniel Chabeda, ES ‘22. Daniel is majoring in Chemistry.
So how do we live well in these difficult home environments? The answer lies in living in faithful relationship with Jesus. Jesus can be trusted to provide the love, patience, kindness, and emotional healing that we all need to bring our homes to the Promised Land.
“Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” - Colossians 3:12-14
The first room I notice when entering my house is “The Pink Room,” a sunlight-filled room with peach-colored walls nestled off to the left of the foyer. These peach-colored walls are loaded with pictures–my mom and dad and siblings, but one family member not pictured in any of The Pink Room’s frames is my mentally ill grandmother. While I was growing up, her psychosis made her agitated and combative. She could hold her own in an argument with the demons inside my bedroom wall all night long. I would plaster my ears with the gritty songs of Metallica and attempt to sleep. During the day, I would self-medicate my loneliness with an acid-green drip of Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Under the Bridge.” We probably both ended up with demons. I told my mom one day, bitter beyond belief, that I might be growing to hate my own grandmother. I think she just sighed, too overwhelmed with grief to even cry.
Across the United States, more than 60 major colleges and universities have closed their classrooms in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic.[1] University administrators have told thousands of students to return home, creating a nationwide exodus of college students from their campuses and spring break destinations towards their homes. This return home is often joyful and long-anticipated, a reunion of siblings, parents and grandparents in a space that once cradled each forming relationship. Home is often looked forward to as the ultimate destination of that harrowing exodus. But home is not always the Promised Land. Home can be a collection of new challenges for students to contend with: maintaining academic motivation, adjusting to a new work environment, and continuing social interactions with peers to name a few. Some challenges are even deeper–abusive parents, psychologically triggering scenes, loneliness–and can turn the intended place of solace into a land of sour milk and honey. For me, home has been an environment of family tension, emotional strain, and spiritual temptation, an environment where I was far from my family and God. In writing this article, I assume that many of you can relate.
Return to life at home, though deeply gratifying in the most human sense, can be punctuated with a sense of loss. The familiar landscape of campus–beeping, bustling crosswalks where no one walks inside the lines, gothic spires against gray skies, the viscous scent of whatever is oozing from behind Mory’s–has been replaced by the plain walls and house chatter of Zoom meetings. These are just the tangible losses. The carefully curated schedules of meeting with friends, prayer, homework, and extracurricular activities have been upended to care for family members, work to provide financial support, or attend to personal mental health. This regression from autonomous adult to household member can be frustrating, but our experience of destabilization from moving into an environment that should be a blessing is not unprecedented. For the ancient nation of Israel, the exodus out of Egypt brought a similar sense of destabilization. God spoke a wonderful promise to Israel, saying “I will deliver you from slavery… and I will be your God… I will bring you into the land that I swore to Abraham.”[2] Yet after being delivered from Egypt, the people complained to God and grumbled at Moses, saying “it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness,”[3] and “would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full.”[4] I sympathize with them. They walked in the desert for three days without any water only to be led by God to a pool of undrinkable water![5] Does this feel familiar? Many of us might feel like Israel: uprooted from the most familiar environment to us and drawn into a wilderness of bitter water, a home full of family members with contrasting personalities, mannerisms, and ideologies perhaps. This destabilization can make us quick to be harsh towards our family. It may even feel like we have been uprooted from the only spiritually familiar and comfortable space to us, a community that supported our pursuit of God and righteousness. The frustration of regression into old sins can make us harsh towards ourselves.
Being home can also present significant emotional and mental challenges. In the current global state of disease, panic, and social distancing due to the spread of COVID-19, being home means being away from the people we have come to cherish. We worry about our friends' safety and health all the way across the world, yet cannot even lay a hand on them to quell our worry. We worry about our immunocompromised family members, so close to us, yet too vulnerable to touch for fear of transmitting sickness. Even outside the context of global pandemic, emotional challenges present themselves. For me, home holds memories of a time when loneliness, arrogance, and even hatred were all vying to be my defining attribute of the day. I don’t know how you have struggled, but being home has a way of reminding us of just how much effort it took to get to wherever we currently are.
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So how do we live well in these difficult home environments? The answer lies in living in faithful relationship with Jesus. Some of you might now be thinking, “what a disappointingly unoriginal conclusion to what was otherwise a fresh and engaging article!” Thank you (hehe). But even Christians can start to think that the grinning, gap-toothed chorus of “Jesus is the answer” from a group of five-year-old Sunday school students squatting on multicolored jigsaw mats is oversimplified if not plain childish.[6] This distrustful response towards Jesus comes from an expectation that God is, like our human relationships, holding out on us. That the gracious giver of all things is holding some true secret to Life away from his children, close to the chest, safe. Like we often do in our relationship with Him.
But God does not hold back. As Paul writes in his letter to the church in Ephesus, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.”[7] Jesus Christ is the absolute fulfillment of God’s will, an everlasting source of love, peace, patience, and kindness in relationship. From the moment we step into relationship with Christ, we have the fullness of a God who holds nothing good back from us. The same promise God gave to the Israelites all those years ago he gives to us: “I will be your God.” With this strength and grace behind us, we act.
How do we act? If you are a Christian, hold to the teaching of Jesus: “let your light shine before others.”[8] Amidst the very real tragedy and suffering of widespread disease, you each have an incredible opportunity to lead your homes in becoming houses of God, where Jesus is glorified as family members show compassion, forgiveness, and love to one another. So be the first to forgive your siblings or parents when disputes arise and the first to apologize when you are in the wrong. “As the Lord has forgiven you, so you must also forgive.”[9] Be intentional about presence! It is possible for a family to be at home and each person to be in their own room, on their own phone, and in their own world. Invite your siblings, "let’s sit at the table together as we do our schoolwork!" Include your parents, "can we all eat meals together?" Let yourself laugh with gut, and smile as you see light dawn in the wilderness.
Though our bodies might be quarantined, let’s not quarantine our hearts by erecting walls of distrust. View all struggles–family tension, emotional pain, spiritual temptation–as an opportunity to let light shine in your home, and not as a heavy burden. How can Jesus develop in us patience if our patience is not tried? And who better than our family members?[10] Sometimes it feels like biological families are sorted randomly, with God paying little heed to compatibility yet expecting lifelong bonds of love. This is by design. Our biological families are a preliminary picture of the family we enter as members of God's family, the church. We are connected not by individual similarity, but shared parentage: in our biological families, our mother and father, but in the church, our heavenly Father.
So look around at your family, see the beautiful diversity of thought, personality, and behavior. Honor the Lord in that family by showing love to each member, showing patience, forgiveness, and humility towards them. Schedule time to sit alongside them. Do not let this opportunity pass with each family member sequestered in their own room, virtual or physical, but be present together. Be the leader in this. This sounds easier said than done, but remember that Jesus is our answer. Jesus is given to us once and for all by his death on the cross, and as we worship Him and pray, a still increasing measure of grace is given to us for help in times of need.[11] Jesus can be trusted to provide the love, patience, kindness, and emotional healing that we all need to bring our homes to the Promised Land.
All, I repeat, all bitterness towards my grandmother has evaporated in the last year. We now have cordial conversations. I pray for her mental illness to be healed. She smiles more now and can sleep better. The craziest part is that I didn’t scrunch up my eyes and pray real hard and try to forgive her either. Jesus just can’t be where bitterness is. For me, that’s miraculous. I want our picture on the Pink Room walls as a memorial of God’s faithfulness. Thank you, Father.
“In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” - Matthew 5:16
I do not assume that everyone reading this comes from the same faith tradition, and I can fully accept that what I have said might seem unreasonable (or just crazy). All this stuff about Jesus being given to us, what does it mean? Allow me to tell one more grief-stricken yet beautiful exodus story.
In the time of the first Exodus, God advocated for the Israelites while they still lived in slavery. He even went so far as to kill all the first born children in households that were not marked by the blood of a “pass-over” lamb. After bringing Israel out of Egypt, He took them through the waters of the Red Sea and through the wilderness, guiding them at each step. He faithfully brought them into the promised land, fulfilling his initial promise. But Christians believe that this exodus, too, is a preliminary picture of the salvation God would bring to his whole earth through Jesus, his only Son. When Jesus came to earth, he advocated for the sick, showing compassion by his healing. He guided people through life’s twists and turns, a leader in righteousness by his teaching and a leader in love by his weeping. Penultimately, he was crucified on a Roman cross as the final “pass-over” lamb whose blood can mark us as protected before God. But the story does not end there. Ultimately, Jesus rose from the dead by the powerful Spirit of God to reign as Lord, and all who believe in Him will one day rise too! But until then, He continues to guide us through the waters and in the wilderness until we can reach Him in heaven, the Promised Land. That is the hope Christians believe in.
Do you feel the love of God stirring your heart? Do you see the love of God in Jesus’ sacrifice? If so, just proclaim this simple prayer to God. He is listening.
Dear God,
I see your
love
in the sacrificial death of Jesus.
I believe you raised Him
to new Life as Lord.
I want to lead a new life.
I accept your gift of
Salvation
So I can love you and love others.
Amen
Have any questions? If so, email me: daniel.chabeda@yale.edu.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/09/us/coronavirus-university-college-classes/index.html
[2] Exodus 6:6,7
[3] Exodus 14:12b
[4] Exodus 16:3
[5] Exodus 15:22-23
[6] Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” - Mark 10:15
[7] Ephesians 1:3 (honestly, just read the whole chapter!)
[8] Matthew 5:16
[9] Colossians 3:13b
[10] This may be especially hard if your home situation remains an obstacle to faith. I did not discuss the unique challenge of unbelieving family members and that some are antagonized for their belief at home, but the advice stays the same. “Let your light shine before others.” Also pray a lot.
[11] Hebrews 4:16