What is life without a home, wandering from place to place with nowhere to go? No place you can call your own, no place to feel secure. Can you have hope when you have no home, when you have no love?
Home isn't necessarily the one place you go to sleep at but it is all the people your around and the atmosphere in which you feel loved and cared for. So in this context what is life without a home? I work with youth struggling with this same problem. Maybe there are people all around them that love them but then why do they not feel loved. I think many of us deal or have dealt with this same thing. We live in a society that is crowded with people who have been raised in broken homes and unhealthy environments. Even in my life there were so many times where I never felt like I had a home.
Each person has their own reasons as to why they feel this way but, as a community, do we care enough to find out the reasons why? For some of us it isn't that we don't care but we are afraid. I think what scares some of us is finding out that the kids we love or the people we love don't feel at home or cared for when they are around us. I mean, what would happen if we were part of the reason why people or youth felt like they had no home? How would you respond? If it was in your power to do something about it or change would you? It's so easy for us to push the blam on to something or someone else rather than take responsibility for our own actions and recognize that every decision we make effects the people around us. It is easy to completely ignore the effects of our decisions when we believe that we have a right to do something or when we are walking in a selfish mindset. Also, our interactions with other people effect the people around us, whether we are aware of it or not.
Take kids for example, in a household their parents relationship and interaction directly effects them. Yelling and arguing in the home increases the stress levels of the kids in the home and can cause them to being to feel isolated or alone and possibly lead to the child mimicking the parents behavior. Every interaction that parents have within a household and everything that goes on within that environment directly effects the children within the home, even if the parents don't expect it to. Similarly our interactions with others can effect those who are around us.
So, if part of why people don't feel comfortable or loved or cared for when they are around us is in part because of our interaction with others then we need to find a way to change, or at least be aware of our actions. The challenging part is finding a way to get those who are hurting to be honest with us about whatever is keeping them from feeling "at home" when they are with us. If we are the ones directly causing a person to feel as though they have no home than it is even less likely they would be honest with us. If they are our kids or one of our students it is even more difficult to get them to be hones (not in all cases of course) because they don't want to hurt us or disrespect us or make us mad or cause us to think badly about them.
One of my biggest concerns for people dealing with these kinds of situations is that rather than "listening" to what the other person, or child, has to say they become defensive . In these kinds of situations it doesn't help to get defensive or give reasons/excuses for our actions. Doing this will, or could, wind up causing a person to shut down rather than continue to be honest, especially youth. If you begin to get defensive with a kid they will shut down or you willf just find yourself getting into an argument. However unique a situation is it requires a lot of love, grace, and patience which I believe can only come from God. It would be Seriously Ridiculous for us to try and go into any type of situation like this and rely on our own wisdom and knowledge. It has to be God in us who gives us the supernatural ability to listen, love, and be honest ourselves.
So, may God help us to be quick to listen and slow to speak.
B.
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