Proverbs 10:12

"Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses."

I'm not sure how to put into words how I feel without feeling so angry and only wanting to cuss people out. There's really only one person I wish I could talk to right now, because he knows about my family and knows me, and is just able to calm me down and make me feel better. I considered him my family, but now he's gone and I don't know how to handle this.

My family, which consists of 3 brothers [one deceased], and 1 sister [my mom] here in the states, and some other family living in England, is the most dysfunctional, stubborn, hatred-filled, unmoving, unchanging, group of people I have ever known. They each talk poorly about each other constantly, always judging, making assumptions, and never talking or even trying to make efforts to not be this way. They lie to each other, and are constantly bickering, and even with extreme situations, turn things around to be about them. It is what I grew up in, and so of course I am the same way.

One of them made a comment on my blog, which I have erased, but left it anonymous, questioning if I pray for my dead uncle. My apologies for being rude, but who are you? And what does it matter to you if I pray for him or not. You've never talked to me about my faith, or Christ, so don't bother acting like you are high and mighty because you attend some church and had your children go through their first communion. I've never seen Christ alive inside of you, but I am unable to make that judgement. You may very well know Him and be struggling to find Him, but it is unnoticeable to me.

Now, what I don't want everyone to believe, or what I would even ever say, is that I am so much of a better person than these people. Like I said, I am just like them. It is why so many of my friendships and my most recent relationships have failed. I have no previous safe concept of 'love' or 'family', and It is really beginning to seriously mess my life up, and I need to figure out how to not continue down this path. In regards to my family, there have been so many unspoken fights, there is so much bitterness and hatred being held against each other, that it would take years of intense biblical counseling involving everyone, and no one is willing to make that commitment, including myself. I know for sure, from previous counseling I was forced into, that my family can act one way towards 'outside people', and the minute we're back in the real world, nothing has changed.

I understand that I am 'old enough to know better,' but really? When you look at what I have been taught...I'm not so sure.

My question is one that I had heard in a sermon Mark did a while back, about persons being bricks in your lives, and how if some people don't change and they do nothing but constantly hurt you, that you have to draw a line and keep them away. The passage today from Psalms is incredibly appropriate. But its forces me into a hard place. The majority of me wants to let my family go, except for my mom, because she is my mom, and I have to deal with her. Even though I don't want to deal with her, I just have to. But the rest of my family, I just don't see it ever getting better. My family does not know the person I am now, they don't know how I have changed, yet they still hold everything I have ever done from when I was a teenager against me. It is impossible to ever make things right with them. I know that for a fact. I have watched it with their own. If you commit a wrong, it will be held in the back of their minds for eternity. Not even a family death will bring them together. They will argue, fight, and do horrible things to each other even in that time.

As a Christian, you are supposed to forgive and love, and move on. I can forgive them for the way they were raised, and for having never been taught to love correctly, but I cannot show them love. They make it too hard, and I am not Jesus. I do not have the grace in me that He does. I mean, even the question someone posted about whether or not I pray for my uncle...it just makes me feel like they are poking fun or trying to set up some type of ruling system that decides whether or not I am doing right. They are almost like the Pharisees, only the Pharisees were actually religious.

I was told not to have anything to do with one part of my family, so why do they haunt me even online, trying to start a fight after months of not speaking?

On top of my own judgments I make on myself everyday for never doing enough or messing up in most things I try, I have my own family making harsh judgments on me. I have to give up on them. They only want to say things to make me feel worse than they feel. There are so many harsh things that we can say to each other. We have each wronged the other in numerous ways. I feel terrible for them, and all I can do is hope the Lord will find them and change their hard hearts, but I cannot be involved anymore.