Building on Broken Foundations: Introduction

The "broken" home is understood to be the home in which a single parent is raising a child.  The term is most often applied to those homes of divorced parents, and even more specifically, the homes of those rather...how shall I put this...acrimonious splits.  Children of parents who separate and split time between mother and father do not usually carry the stigma of being "broken" home children.  Yes, I believe the term does carry certain stigmas and implications.  I came to understand certain of these things at a young age when no child should be faced with such things.  But then again, at what age is a child equipped to see the dissolution of his family foundation?  That aside, I was quickly finding myself having to navigate in a new social structure.  The looks from adults at my church and school were diferent.  Those pitiful looks that I could never quite justify with my reality.  Should I have been more sullen?  I didn't know quite how to react at first.  I began to understand that my sister and I were now "broken" home kids.  I could gather what that meant on the surface, and knew that it was just sissy, mommy, and me from then on.

However, I didn't yet grasp the connotations the term brought with it.  The implication that our home was somehow "broken" made me angry after I figured out what the term meant to those who used it in that certain way.  The home my mother made for my sister and me was a joyous home.  I did not say happy- I said joyous.  Happiness is subjective to mood and circumstance.  We had happy times and sad times.  Sadness was the sometime result of my natural longing for my absent father; that fact is undeniable.  Those emotions would bubble to the surface every now and again, and were a constant undercurrent of my mental and emotional state.  It didn't manifest itself in constant or even prolonged periods of moping around or self-pity.  For one thing, my mother didn't allow it.  She taught me that things happen for a reason, and tried, best as she could, to help me work through the grief and anger. 

Our home was joyous because of the unshakable faith my mother possessed.  She passed that faith on to me and my sister through our formative years and the events that would shape my childhood and adolescence.  Through the myriad trials of raising two children by herself, my mother was my rock.  She had to fill the position my father had left empty.  She had to balance her unconditional love with the challenge of fulfilling the role of disciplinarian to a growing boy.  This task was the hardest task she faced, I think.  She was both "good" cop and "bad" cop.  Despite the hardships of her single-parenthood, she made our home joyous.  We were very close and she made love and affection a theme of our home.  I never viewed it as "broken." 

I did realize that our home was incomplete.  With each passing year, my father's absence became more glaring.  His dereliction of duty began to resonate more loudly with me.  My mother would work harder each year to make up for this deficiency.  She could sense that I, as a person and a young man, became more and more incomplete with the passage of time.  She tried to fill each role my father did not.  This was done at varying levels of success.  In discipline, she succeeded- but only because we were so close.  To know that I had let her down in any way was a knife to the heart.  I would melt at the sight of her tears.  To be a source of pain to this woman who was sacrificing her life to enrich mine, had a more profound effect than any of her attempts at corporal punishment.  The one thing lacking in her discipline was the taming of my spirit.  A young man needs a man to come up against him to tame and temper his spirit whenever he becomes unruly.  I had no male to balance out the strong masculine spirit I was developing.  No woman can adequately discipline a young man once he reaches a certain level of his development in manhood.  The feminine cannot corral the masculine. 

In her attempts to be a partaker in "manly" activities, she was a true gamer.  She would toss the football with me, but she threw like a girl.  At night, I would weep over the fact that she would even try.  She would work all day, often working heavy overtime, and come home to cook and clean and...engage me in my interests in "guy" things?  I will always fondly remember each wobbly pass she threw my way and each time she shot hoops with me, and how she made it to everyone of my ballgames that she could.  She made a conscious effort to fulfill needs she knew I had.  She was teaching me about true love- laying down your life for others.  She was teaching me about sacrifice.  She was teaching me about being a man.  Still, it was a duty that she could never fully complete.  God did not intend for her to have to even try, but my how she did.  I love her deeply for her efforts in this area.

The incomplete nature of my childhood home is my broken foundation.  All across America, young men and women face the same challenge I faced: how do we build upon our broken foundations?  Is it possible to successfully build sound lives on broken foundations?  How do we mend the cracks and crevices that plague our society's foundation?  Knowing what to add to your foundation, and when, is the key to successfully building on broken foundations.  Through this process, the incomplete nature of the individual can be made whole.  When individuals are healed, homes can be healed.  As this happens, the fabric of our society can be strengthened.