Daddy Issues

For the next year, I will be serving as a chaplain resident at the Durham VA Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina.   In my time there, I will help families and veterans walk through fear, grief, and loss.  My continual prayer has been that this be a time of healing.  

It is a blessing to serve as a chaplain. I'm able to focus on helping others and do a tremendous amount of personal discovery.  We have regular meetings where we spend time opening up about the emotional and spiritual wounds we carry with us into ministry.  One of the tenets of our chaplain experience is you can only go as far in someone else's pain as you've been in your own.  

I like to call this early unrecognized pain Daddy Issues.  "Daddy issues" represents emotional baggage from childhood that follows us into adulthood.  This can include abuse, disappointment, insecurity, and many other conditions.  Daddy issues can be harmful if they're not discerned and exposed.  Of course, these issues don't necessarily come from fathers.  There are many amazing fathers (Psalm 103:13 below) and there are many experiences in our lives that negatively effect us.   However, for me, this has been a helpful way to think about this because I didn't have my biological father in my life.  What I'm growing to learn is that his absence has impacted how I see God.  Whether I admit it or not, his absence has also shaped the way I minister to others.  If I'm not aware, I can be ministering to others out of my own needs rather than theirs.  


I believe this happens more than we think.  We serve others to fill some void in our own lives (the desire to experience validation, power, or love).  I pray we can expose these motives and the issues that birthed them.  I'm so grateful for chaplaincy giving me the space to help others through their healing.  But I'm also blessed to have a year where I can uncover and maybe even discard some of my own emotional baggage.  I don't want to use ministry to cover past hurts or relieve my own insecurities.  As I minister to others, I need to be doing the harder work of ministering to myself.  




Our Father, who art in heaven, Your name is hallowed.  Your kingdom is nearing, Your will is occurring.  Please help us to recognize our own emotional and spiritual issues.  The baggage we ignore reveals itself in how we care for others.  Please help us to minister as broken vessels who have discovered where our leaks are.



Sharing,
j.a.g.



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Psalm 103:13 

As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him;


Colossians 3:21

Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.

The Parable of the Cinnamon Rolls

For the longest time, I have been burning the bottom of cinnamon rolls. Then one day last week, I cooked them a little differently than usual.  I oiled the pan  first.  Then, instead of keeping the rolls spaced out (which I normally did), I put them in a group together.  I let them cook in the oven and checked on them periodically.  After a short while, I looked in on them and the tops had cooked as normal.  So now was the major test. I checked the bottom... and they were perfect!!!   What I noticed was that the more rolls were in the pan, the less heat there was on each one.  The rolls absorb the heat from one another and keep them all from being burnt.  

The cinnamon rolls represent people.  The oil represents the presence of God. (Leviticus 21:12)  The heat represents the trials of life.  By going through hard times in life together, we protect one another from being scarred and unusable.  We also allow one another to expand and become the best we can be.  God's presence is with us, but it is not the only thing we've been given to sustain us.  There are other rolls in the pan too!

For the last three years, our family has been in the oven of seminary.  By God's grace, we've been through the fire and made it out.   Today is the moment of icing - Graduation Day!!!

"It is not good for rolls to be alone"

We've learned many things about God and ourselves.  The biggest lesson has not been a theory or powerful explanation.  It has been the power and strength of community.  It has come in the form of friends and family who have gathered around us to protect us from the heat.  Phone calls, letters, study groups, cards, text messages, prayers, gifts, and visits just to say, let me come next to you while you face this.  

God puts us in each other's lives to keep the heat off one another.  The closer we become, the better we can withstand the fire.  When you are facing heat in your life, don't separate from others, get closer! I honor my wife, Ashley, who has remained in the oven with me through this season.  I love you and am so grateful for your presence in my life.  I also thank God for each of my classmates, who have become dear rolls to me.   :)  

Finally, to each person who said or did ANYthing to come alongside us during this season, may God richly bless you.  You have taught us the most important part of being God's creation - we were made to go through life together.  We are forever grateful for your relationship and Godly example.  Well, it's breakfast time now - let's go get this icing!!!

Thank you Lord for allowing us the blessing of friends and family. Thank you for our parents. Thank you for our co-workers. Thank you for our teachers and mentors. Thank you for our pastors. Thank you for each new person we met during our time in Durham. Thank you for Your presence with us here. Please help us never to forget the strength in doing life close together. Why you love us, we'll never fully know. But thank You for choosing us to go through the heat and come out better. We love You. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Cooling,
j.a.g.

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Leviticus 21:12 - nor leave the sanctuary of his God or desecrate it, because he has been dedicated by the anointing oil of his God. I am the Lord.