Dear Congregation:
Last Sunday, I read parts of a book during the Time for All Ages. The name of the book is Wildfire, by Breena Bard (see photo).
Because I was speaking to children and youth of all ages, and only had an about five minutes, I lifted up only a few themes from the book. But this amazing graphic novel covers many themes pertinent to families who have just gone through a tragedy. In this book, the family loses their farm in rural Oregon during a wildfire and relocates to Portland. In their effort to be strong for the kids and get through daily logistics, the parents don’t share their grief with their kids. And in an effort not to be pitied by new friends, the main character, a teen, does not share that she knows one of the boys who started the fire — who is now also in her new Portland school. By the end of the book, the pressure builds to a point where the parents and teen are finally able to talk about their grief and anger. This came about in part because of a school teacher who observed the overwhelm in the teen. One lesson from this is that safe adults outside a family can often be a buffer and link to healing within a family.
When I was 16, my father had a stroke and became paralyzed on his left side. During that next year, the church was a place where parents of my friends made space for my emotions. Further, the church’s pastoral counselor offered family counseling sessions where I discovered that saying hard things to my parents could actually lead to all of us feeling better.
My wish for all of us, of all ages, is that when life sends us painful curveballs, and when stress overwhelms us, that we eventually find our way to talking with our closest loved ones. And if any part of the Fellowship can help with that, may it be so.
With care,
Rev. Alex