5 Ways to Hold Your Children Together in a Broken World

She climbed right up on the table on hands and knees to cup a sweaty mason jar brimming with sweet Southern nectar. She gulps big and I turn around just in time to see glass turned up. I scoop her up and put her down on the ground. All thirty inches of a child who knows no fear of heights or hurts. I'm the only one that saw visions of an imminent fall and broken glass. She knows only freedom to roam safe within the walls of our home.

I'm a mama less than eighteen months old. I'm prone, so very prone, to fears of all things big and small. Big fears that storms will come and winds will blow us over or disease will wipe us out in the prime of our life leaving wee girls alone. Small fears that plans will alter and disagreements will happen and I will be left alone. Alone with my thoughts, alone with my fears, alone. Somehow my fears always end with me alone.

Isn't that all of our fears? That we will end up alone with no advocate, with no one to stand in the gap for us?

I watch her eyes dart from me to her daddy and back again. She is searching our eyes for fear. She is searching our faces for signs that she should fear. I kneel down to her level and tell her to be brave. I tell her that we are standing right here and she is never as alone as a heart can feel.

I talk to a woman in the evening years of life. The years when our eyes turn homeward a bit more and the idea of staying here in this ragged bent and broken world starts to lose it's luster. I realize that the world only gets more broken the longer you stay.

How do you teach your children to walk straight in a broken and bent world? 


She is small now and I can shade her eyes from the hurt and horror that is the daily newsfeed. I can shelter her from Oklahoma tornadoes and from people in bondage around the world, but at some point the brokenness will break in and break her and the only way that she can hold together is in Christ.

He holds us together till the end and maybe the end comes at the hands of wicked cancer or at the hands of a tsunami or even at the hands of another human just lookin' for some cash for a fix. All I know is that in Christ no matter how the brokenness breaks us God has made a plan to make us whole and better than new for all eternity. We've got to learn to live that not just mentally ascent to it by singing a round of "In the Sweet By and By" at grandma's funeral.

We have to break the spell of the brokenness by believing that winter will not last forever and a King has come, will come and break it for all eternity. 

5 Ways to Model Wholeness in a Broken World: 

• Serve- Acknowledge the brokenness by being a means of grace to the suffering among us. Get your hands dirty serving in your community or in another country. 

• Share- Make your kids aware that this is a broken world, but that there is one solution; Christ. Teach them to share that truth with everyone they meet through words, deeds and joy.

• Give Thanks- Make gratitude the posture of your own heart and train your children to do the same. 

• Live without fear- Bad things may happen, will happen, but God says perfect love (which He gives us!) casts out fear. You can live without fear and you can teach your kids to do the same. You can't raise a child and hold them back at the same time. 

•  Make your home a haven- Your home can be a haven from fear for both your kids and your community. It doesn't have to be fancy. Just swing open the doors and invite folks into your imperfect life to share grace.