One of my favorite Bible verses is:

Be still and know that I am God. – Psalm 46:10

With four kids, two dogs and a busy live, I find myself surrounded by constant motion and constant noise. This time of year, that only intensifies. In the midst of all of that, is important to remember to find time for silence. So, this Christmas, those of us here at Hope 4 Hurting Kids wish you and yours a:

Silent Christmas

As I was pondering all of that this week and driving to work, I happened to listen to a podcast called Where There’s Smoke. I have listened to it for a while now and like it more and more each week. This particular episode was called “Soaking in the Holidays (Feeling).” In this episode, after a brief introduction, Brett and Nick discuss what to do if you’re feeling down this Christmas season and then explore the importance of silence (and the peace it brings) at Christmas. In the hustle and bustle of Christmas, I encourage you to take some time to listen to this very helpful podcast and to embrace the silence of the season.

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Dear Hurting Child,

This weekend is Christmas! You probably knew that all ready. The malls have been decked out in red and green for well over a month now. Traffic is crazy, and you don’t even want to venture into the local store to do any last minute Christmas shopping (Trust me! I know!). Children have sent their Christmas wish lists to the North Pole. Parents have fretted over how to ensure that their kids get all that they want for Christmas. Stockings have been hung, Christmas Trees decorated, cookies baked and carols sung. There is no avoiding the spectacle that Christmas has become in our country.

All over this country this weekend, indeed all over the world, kids will open presents. Parents will take time out of their busy schedules to spend time rejoicing in the joy and happiness of their children. Stocking will be emptied, presents will be exchanged, laughter will be heard, and people will enjoy time together with family and close friends. Indeed, Christmas has become a time where family is celebrated and togetherness has become the ultimate goal.

Yet for many of you, we know that Christmas does not bring warm tidings of great joy. It comes with memories of the way Christmas used to be or maybe the way you wish it should be. It comes with decisions about who to spend this most important day with and desires for people long sense out of lives. For some it brings an overwhelming sense of loneliness even as they spend the day in the company of many people. We understand that Christmas can be a very stressful time for you and your families as you struggle with less time, less money and less togetherness. If Christmas is all about families and togetherness, then for many people it will not be much of a celebration at all these days.

But, that is not the end of the story. See, if Christmas is all about family and great tidings of good joy, then it is understandable why there might not be much there for you. But, Christmas is about so much more than that. Christmas is about the Creator of the Universe giving up everything He had in heaven to come to earth as a helpless infant. He gave up the adoration and worship of a multitude of angel for a dirty stable and a manger for a bed. He gave perfect union with the Heavenly Father to come and walk amongst His creation, and ultimately to be rejected by those He had given life.

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A young single mom entered my class one Sunday close to Christmas. She was almost trembling and I could tell she was very upset. She just stood there looking at me and when I asked,

What’s wrong?

She said,

I need a hug.

Single parenting is tough almost all the time, but Sundays seem particularly hard for single parents. It could be that they are exhausted from the week and don’t have to rise as early as on the weekday so they sleep in for a few minutes or an hour. Then, it’s hard to get out of bed and face getting the children dressed, fed and in the car by yourself. Or perhaps it is attending church where it seems like everyone is part of a couple.

Christmas time is no exception, and many times worse, because of the added stress of it being Christmas. The single mom above was one such mom. Added to the stress of Christmas was the birthday of her daughter who turned one year old a few days before Christmas. She had been parenting alone since before the baby was born. Plus she had a two year old.

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The past two weeks we have examined some of the short-term and long-term legacies of divorce on children. In this article we will look at ways you can help children in your church lessen the impact of some of these issues.

Do Something

Many children’s leaders have shared that they tend to hold back or shy away from children of divorce simply because they are afraid of making things worse for the child. Next time you face such fears, think to yourself,

How much worse can anything be than to watch the two people in the world you love the most split up and live in two separate households?

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Kids these days are stressed. There are a multitude of different ways to help kids deal with stress, but there is one very simple stress reliever that you’ve probably all tried at one point or another – packaging bubbles. Despite Amazon and many other online stores abandoning this joy inducing packaging in their boxes, it’s still pretty easy to get you hands on the old-fashioned bubble wrap (check out your local office supply store, do it yourself moving store or big box retailer).

I like to have a little fun with it and make a label for the bubble wrap. I keep a handful on hand to pass out to stressed out kids (and adults). Here’s a picture of the stress reliever we put together (I printed the labels; my son and daughter cut the bubble wrap and stapled the labels to the bubbles).

Here’s what our label says:

STRESS RELIEF

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One of the most significant obstacles we face in ministering to hurting kids and children from disrupted homes is that they don’t tend to come to our churches. Statistically, children from ANY type of family other than married biological parents are significantly less likely to attend church. So, if you’re serious about ministering to these hurting kids, and there are tons of them no matter where you live, you have to get outside the walls of your church and take your ministry to them. Fortunately, through my work with these kids and speaking at various conferences, I have been fortunate enough to meet a handful of people who are doing just that. Rachael Groll is the Children’s Ministry Director at Living Waters Church (http://www.livingwaterschurch.tv/) in Meadville, PA. She has started a program through her church that goes out and finds these kids where they live and ministers to them. Rachael was kind enough to answer some questions for us about the ministry she started, why it works and how it impacts the kids she is ministering to and the church.

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Q: Hi Rachael. Why don’t you start by telling a little bit about yourself and your church?

A: HI Wayne. Thanks for the opportunity. I currently am the Children’s Director at Living Waters Church. I oversee all programming of children, from birth through age twelve. This includes our Bus Ministry, Sidewalk Ministry, Wednesday night programming, and Sunday morning services. Living Waters is unique in our area, in that our focus is really to seek out the lost and bring them Jesus. You see this throughout every area of our church. We have a mobile food pantry, evangelism teams that go out into the community, a foster and adoption ministry, and we host several community events throughout the year. One of the things we focus on as a staff is really getting outside the four walls, and ministering to the community.

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This week’s weekend reading is on a topic I had never heard of before seeing this article (8 Steps to Companioning). It is something called companioning. I don’t know all the details, but it appears to be very similar to the idea of mentoring or discipleship. Read through this article from Christian Works and think about how it might apply to your work with kids.

Ideas for Further Thought and Discussion

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Getting kids to talk about their emotions plays a huge part in helping them to process those emotions, get past them and move on with their lives. When you can combine that process with candy, well that just creates an all-around great situation. That why we were so excited to come across the M&M emotion game at Living a Rad Life.

In this game, you use snack sized bags of chocolate covered candy (M&M’s) in order to get kids talking about their emotions. You and the child (or every child if you are working with a group) starts with one fun-sized bag of candy. On your turn, you pull one candy out of the bag and share an emotion/experience based on that color. Only after sharing do you actually get to eat the candy.

In this version of the game, you have to do one of the following depending on which candy you pull out of the bag:

• Red: Share something the makes you Happy
• Brown: Share something that makes you Sad
• Green: Share something that makes you Angry
• Yellow: Share something that makes you Excited
• Blue: Share one poor choice you’ve made today and what you could have done different
• Orange: Share one good choice you made today

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Christmas is such a special time for those of us who love the Lord. It is a time to celebrate the birth of our Savior. Unfortunately it has also become one of the most stressful times of the year.

The hustle and bustle of shopping, church programs, getting together with families and friends tends to create self-imposed stress. As adults most of know when to back off, say no and we’ve learned to take time to enjoy the season.

Unfortunately for many kids, their families, surroundings and circumstances don’t give them the option of a calm Christmas. Most are stressed to the max. For many kids, it’s the unknown in terms of what this Christmas is going to be like that is causing stress.

There are many things you can do to accommodate these children. One of the things is to be aware of is the kinds of foods stressed out children need. Foods that are comforting in the mouth (such as apple sauce) feel good and comforting to many children.

When my son was in third grade he ate jar after jar of applesauce. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with him eating so much applesauce. Now I understand that the softness and the comforting feeling in the mouth helped him as he was adjusting to his dad’s moving out. The applesauce met a need he had.

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As children’s ministry leaders you may have found the article posted last week, “Understanding the Short-Term Legacies of Divorce,” interesting and relevant to the work you are currently doing with the children in your church. This week, as we discuss the long-term legacy of divorce, you might be inclined to think that understanding these is not as important as many are not likely to show up until children have left your ministry. Quite to the contrary, it is important for you to recognize the long-term legacies of divorce so that, as church leaders, you can help an individual child to better cope and potentially even lessen the impact of a particular long-term legacy.

While the long-term legacy of divorce may, and likely will, still affect the child in future years, your input today may help to lessen the severity of the impact as opposed to the child who hasn’t been exposed to the love of Christ and a loving church family.  As churches become more cognizant about the impact of divorce on children they can step up minister more effectively to these children. This can take many forms including hosting support groups such as DivorceCare for Kids for elementary age children and “The Big D” for teens dealing divorce. Churches can tailor a bible study class or VBS to accommodate hurting children of divorce. These types of ministries and programs can and will give children better outcomes overall as they grow and mature surrounded by the love of God in a church family.

It is important to remember that not every child of divorce will be affected by divorce in the same way. The purpose of this article is to discuss general long-term legacies of divorce that many children experience. If you read the statistics on some of these issues, it can be frightening and disheartening. When I became a single parent, my children were eight and twelve years of age. At first I bought into all the hype and statistics about children of divorce. I felt like my children were doomed. I remember praying and begging the Lord to not let my twelve-year-old daughter get pregnant at fifteen and to allow my son to graduate from high school and not get involved in drugs. What a pitiful prayer! I shudder to think what would have happened to my children if I had held onto those pathetic thoughts. Along the way, the Lord helped me realize my children could survive and thrive.

Today, we want to look at some of the long-term impacts that divorce has on children as they mature into teenagers, young adults and even adulthood. Much of the information in this article comes from my own observations from working with children of divorce for over thirty years. It also comes from the nation’s leading adult support group called DivorceCare and from interviewing many adult children of divorce.

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