Two years have passed since my last post. Thankfully and incredibly, we didn't need a Plan B.
Charity status, funding and a full-blown-proper-grown-up job-running an organisation ensued and the last two years have been a learning curve that has sometimes felt impossible but always breathtaking. Hope at Home has now been operating for almost two years and we shake our heads in wonder at the journey God has taken us on.
But this blog has mostly been about the realities of family life and our attempts to raise our boys to be worldchangers.
And so, two years on, we now find ourselves parents to an 18 year old, a 15 year old and a 12 year old. Muddy forest walks and tree climbing have been replaced by x-box games, driving, girls, expensive trainers and part time jobs. Our lives are unrecognisable from those years of marbles, ice-sculpture-making and breakfast bible reading.
I decided that honesty over silence might be beneficial, not simply for me (as writing helps me process) but for others who feel the weight and sometimes shame of family life not being the one you'd expected.
So, here's our current reality (prepare yourselves for some eye-watering honesty):
1. Despite years of solid faith and foundations, two of our young men are not living a life that we expected them to live. They don't come to church with us. We don't pray as a family anymore. I don't know if they pray when they are on their own. They drink. They smoke. They do other stuff that we find unbearable to watch.
2. Good mental health is a daily battle. We have both seen a therapist over the last couple of years. Depression and anxiety tap us on the shoulder continuously as we wade through the trenches of life.
3. We are still waiting for promises to be fulfilled. Promises over our boys, our marriage and our life. Currently, they look impossible.
4. Working together, living together and parenting together has been one of the hardest aspects of running Hope at Home. Our marriage has suffered.
5. All those smug feelings of being a good Christian parent have come back to bite us on the bum. Did all our efforts work? We don't know. That feels scary.
6. We swear. I know. Those naughty words that we didn't allow the boys to say are now regular features of our conversations.
7. Speaking of conversations, our mealtime chats (when everyone is actually there) aren't about dinosaurs and zombie apocalypses anymore. They're about gender identity, feminism, terrorism, human rights, the death penalty, masturbation, atheism and sex toys. (I warned you it would be eye watering.)
8. We wait up at night to see if our young men will stick to their curfew or not. And when they don't, we worry. And when they do, we still worry.
9. An ADHD diagnosis has brought understanding but also more challenge as we navigate life with a new lens.
10. It all flipping hurts. And we cry. Lots.
(And even while I've been writing this blog there has been a blazing row about the whens and wheres of going out.)
We know we are doing the right thing with Hope at Home. It's progressing at a pace. It's changing lives and sometimes even saving lives.
Everything else? It's (insert swear word or other more polite word of your choice).
But.
I have a choice.
Do I bow to the sadness, the shame, the feelings of despair?
Do I give up and give in?
Do I stop loving the One who made the promises?
Do I decide it's not worth it?
Do I still believe God is good?
I have to choose to keep going.
Keep believing he keeps his promises.
Keep trusting my boys are in his hands.
Keep declaring he is good.
Keep lifting my eyes up to his goodness and mercy above the depression and anxiety.
Keep remembering his faithfulness over the years.
So, we choose vulnerability and honesty over silence and shame.
We open up our bruised hearts, allowing others to stand with us, and we wait for the Promise Keeper to do what he says he will do.
