And it starts...again

So I've been back all of four days now and already tensions flare in my family OTL (<-- man keeling over on hands/knees. Look carefully).

My father's temper is a force to be reckoned with (or, at all costs, evaded, but that hardly ever happens), and one never knows when it will go off. Today, it went off for the most mundane of reasons. For my father, everything he does has a logic to it, even if that logic is wholly based in irrationality and spontaneity of the moment. And though I understood why he got upset this time, the fact of the matter is, he is just plain and simple in the wrong.

It's ironic because currently I just finished reading a historical novel about Henry VII and his involvement with his 4th and 5th wives-- how he treated them, mistreated them, discarded them, decapitated them all at his whim and folly. And the more I read the book, the more I could find similar traits in my father. Henry VII was most likely crazy, however, nearing the end of his lifetime, and perhaps that gives some indication of the state of my father's mentality (or lackthereof). It also offers immense insight into why he acts the way he is-- he thinks he is a king, entitled to whatever he wants, rooted in his past of always getting what he wants and never being denied, much like that of dear ole Henry's.

I used to think I was immune to whatever happened in my family. That no matter the struggle, I could detach myself from it emotionally, or at least prevent myself from become too emotionally wielded by the moment because I could see and understand why things happen the way they do. I could understand the sequence of thoughts that provoked my father's words and actions. Yet, lately, when I see how unnecessarily enraged my father becomes, how much more magnified it appears than in years past, and when I speak with my mother and feel her heart breaking under all the pressures and weight of having to deal with this every moment of her life, when I hear her quiet surrender of hope for change... I, too, become weary and I, too, begin to question whether change will come.

Whenever things broke out in my family, I would always turn to God, believing fully that He would listen and that He would change things. As I grow older, though, and become more accustomed to merely waiting out my father's anger, to suppressing the anger that consequently builds in my heart as a reaction to this witness of injustice and tyranny, I desire less and less to plead with God, as I have done for the past twenty or so years. My vision for a changed future becomes ever the more darker and blurred and my hopes of a new life for my family starts to dwindle. Will change really come? Can God change my father and my family? Maybe for other fathers, for other families, they were built of a foundation meant for change, of a malleable substance more sensitive to the moldings of our God than my father or family is built and made of. Perhaps, change for my family will never mean what it does for those who have experienced miracles and happy endings-- what if change just means a tailoring of everyone else's will to my father's, each and every second he wills it? What if that is all the change that our family can aspire to?

I know that's not true. I know God works miracles and just like Christ saved and redeemed us, so too will he save and redeem my family. The small seed of doubt never fails, however, to loom dangerously overhead fertile fields of faith...ready to be sowed by Satan when darkness hits... And I think more than fearing for a lack of change in my family, I fear for the presence of change-- negative change-- in my spiritual foundations and faith in God. Never have I ever felt so helpless and meaningless than I do in these moments. And the only times I ever question whether the Lord is lord over my family is during these times of difficulty, when the difficulties seem to never cease and it seems that they never will.

I need to pray... I always do. And why is it that it is only when I'm slapped so hard in the face and pricked in the heart by reality that I realize it... And subsequently ignore it after some time passes? I'm so selfish. My selfishness overtakes my spiritual duties to my family. Because if no one else in my family but me believes God can change all things-- and if I should be the one to lose that faith-- then who else is left?