Love and The Broken Family Tree
Lori A. McBride
When anger and unforgiveness
Invade the very crevices of your heart
It burns fierce like sulfur
As it forces love to depart.
Causing only the mention of a name
To consume you with hate
As its poison reeks havoc
on the next generations fate
This grudge festers on
Keeping you imprisoned in pain
Causing every life force around you
To bare the affects of your strain
For hate and love
Cannot reside in one heart
Just as hate takes a family
And tears it all apart
The heart dies a slow death
As it mourns the loss of love
Never understanding it’s very being
Is created in the heavens above
How can it be reconciled
To LOVE, the creator of life
If the heart still remains
In unforgiveness and strife?
The Great lesson in life’s purpose What we are sent here…
The poem I wrote in 2001 called “A Broken Family Tree” has become a fulfilled prophecy! The Lord works in mysterious ways! He is literally talking to us all the time! One must have only the faith of a tiny mustard seed to hear Him. He is that still small voice you hear deep in your heart! The more you are willing to believe this TRUTH the MORE you will hear Him. It’s been 8 years of me actually realizing That I am able to hear Him. Of course the bible emphasizes this repeatedly but religion that deny ‘ s the active power and leading of the Holy Spirit TODAY can cause so many people to go their entire lives without knowing that they were not just created by God to one day, after death be resurrected and introduced to Him. Rather, they were created by Him, for Him, to KNOW HIM. The meaning in the Bible of know is actually intimately. As a husband and wife know each other and are ONE. God wants us to be IN relationship with Him, that we would become One. His Holy Spirit living IN YOU! The Bible clearly tells of this great mystery. We are not ONLY to be baptized by water but also by fire through the Holy Spirit. I was water baptized when I was 19. Though I believed Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior and desired to do good and change I couldn’t. From 19 until 33 I believed I could never be a “Good enough” Christian! I had a stained, painful past and was could never see my true self but only a hopeless dry branch on a scorned broken family tree. Â I believed I could never good like all the other women I was surrounded by who were raised from birth going to church. I used to think of them as the people who were born with a Christian silver spoon in their mouth. Though today I have grown to understand that being born into religion and Christianity doesn’t always mean your blessed with knowing the whole TRUTH. Yet, everything appeared so perfect about these women. Â And wanted so much to be like them. I admired their church dresses, tidy upscale homes, nice cars, and the respect their husbands gave them. And so, our differences were many and our similarities were few. I was raised on the ball field, that was my church! A gathering of like minded people who share a common interest. In my case united interests of my church was WIN! PLAY HARD, GET FILTHY DIRTY AND BE THE BEST. HIT, RUN, SLIDE, DIVE, PITCH, FIELD AND THROW, WHATEVER IT TAKES EVERYTHING IF SACRIFICING YOUR BODY TO MAKE THE PLAY IS NECESSARY. Meanwhile, they were raised in the pews, singing hymns, dressing up in darling dresses and chatting at after service fellowship luncheons. I prayed to The Lord since I was a little girl and always wished my parents would take me to church but that was it. I knew NOTHING about the Bible and quite frankly those 13 years after being water baptized and going to church on and off I never learned ANYTHING! OH, except I did memorize the chronological order of the books in the entire new testament. Which I have now forgotten. Yet, knowing the order of those books did absolutely NOTHING for me spiritually. Sure, it made it really easy to to get to a scripture in church service but that’s it. I took NOTHING about the scripture itself home with me. Nothing stuck in my head let alone reached my heart because Nothing was ever taught about relationship with our Lord or The Holy Spirit TODAY. And it’s incredible to me that I spent 13 broken lost and empty years never knowing the Love and truth of God. Yet in 2006 just as my x husband and I were separating to be divorced, though not by my choice, God literally became REAL to me! As though He swept me up into His loving arms and said to my heart “my beloved, I am your husband now and forever! I will protect you, LOVE you as you have never been loved before, teach you, heal your pain and brokenness and I will be your Father and your children’s Father. I will raise them, you need not fear the future for it will not be you but I through you and through the many others that I have already prepared to be spiritual parents to your children. They are now my children and I will teach them and lead them into all Truth. Trust me.” And for the first time ever I began to trust someone! It took many fearful days and nights along with much spiritual warfare to finally really trust him as I do today. What is so amazing is that I began changing. My heart, my thoughts and my desires were no longer my own. I was different and I wasn’t even trying. It wasn’t even a month after I had been separated from my X-husband before I started ministering to my 3 kids. My twin daughter’s were 12 and my son was 11. I found myself learning of God and His truth by talking to my kids. Literally, the Holy Spirit was teaching us all through my voice. I was saying things like fill your hearts with an abundance of love, let love overflow out of your hearts, and other general sayings all the time. But then I started saying biblical truths as though I was a theology scholar. It was the strangest thing I ever experienced. I didn’t understand it but I didn’t question it either because the lessons and council I would give my children and myself would always be confirmed shortly after. I would be led right to the scriptures that taught the things I had just said days before. Or I would go to our new church and the pastor would talk about it and share the same scriptures. All kinds of things like this would “coincidently”;)happen time after time after time. I never knew these things prior to thinking it up just as the words flowed from my mouth. How does one possibly deny The power and voice of the Holy Spirit TODAY! GOD DOES NOT CHANGE! GOD is the same yesterday as He is today and will be tomorrow. The Holy Spirit did not go away with The Father and the Son up to heaven far, far away to wait to KNOW us *intimately, personally after we die. What would the purpose of life on earth be if that were the case. Why would God who created us for Himself and as the Bible says commanded us to LOVE HIM 1ST AND FOREMOST ABOVE ALL OTHER THINGS AND WITH ALL OF OUR HEART, ALL OF OUR SPIRIT AND WITH ALL OF OUR STRENGTH if we’re not MEANT to be in relationship with Him. It is impossible to be in relationship with God without the power of the Holy Spirit! One cannot believe in God the Father and believe in the Son yet deny the Holy Spirit today. It is the HOLY SPIRIT that connects God’s Spirit and the Spirit of Jesus together which connects with our Spirit. We must receive this free gift NOT DENY IT. And so I pose this question to all who believe they are saved and will know and be with God in Heaven; if you married a person whom you never met and never talked to. Never heard their voice and only read their bibliography, would you be able to LOVE that person ABOVE EVERYTHING ELSE WITH ALL OF YOUR HEART, SPIRIT AND STRENGTH? Do WE NOT REQUIRE INTIMACY? And don’t we also need that person to intimately know us to the point that you can finish each other’s sentences? The Bible says at the end, on that day of judgment many will say “Lord, Lord….and He will say get away from me I never KNEW you! May the Lord bless you and keep you”! May His face shine upon you! :)and peace to you my friend!
Click link to see the poem I wrote called “A Broken Family Tree” that “Wildfire Media” posted. It was made into a video poem.
Hi, I am Lori McBride also known by my previous married name Lori A. Cain. This is a poem I wrote called “A Broken Family Tree” in 2001 while I was living in Lake Tahoe, California. I found this on YouTube while searching different links where this poem was used. This is my favorite find. Its a video poem with a young man who recites my poem called “A Broken Family Tree”. Its much more than just reciting though. I was amazed at this rendition put together by a class in which country I am uncertain of.
The end is my favorite part. When it says in the poem “alone I will go, and plant the new seeds where a beautiful tree will grow” and a tiny stem comes forth through the ground. I look at that stem, that little baby tree and know its my granddaughter Trinity. She is 9 months old now and has a sibling on the way. Its this generation in my family that with destroy the axe that has caused suffering from the beginning. I will be forever grateful that “wildfire media” posted this on YouTube. My decendants will all be able to see it hopefully one day. Hope you enjoy the video and I hope you watch it to the end to see the new tree! 🙂 thanks.
Excellent!!! Well done!!! Well done!!!! This message sums it all up perfectly! Why we are here! If we can’t love even the very least (in the worlds eyes least meaning, poor, in prison, mentally ill and so on) then we are not fit for the Kingdom! What if, just what if God being our Father did what our earthly father does to his child when he needs to correct his behavior and says “you go to your room until you learn how to be nice”, in other words “you go to earth until you learn how to LOVE”!! What if you never learn? He says it very clearly in His Word…”how can you Love me who you can’t see if you can’t even love your neighbor who you do see”!
Just a thought.
Love and The Broken Family Tree
Lori A. McBride
When anger and unforgiveness
Invade the very crevices of your heart
It burns fierce like sulfur
As it forces love to depart.
Causing only the mention of a name
To consume you with hate
As its poison reeks havoc
on the next generations fate
This grudge festers on
Keeping you imprisoned in pain
Causing every life force around you
To bare the affects of your strain
For hate and love
Cannot reside in one heart
Just as hate takes a family
And tears it all apart
The heart dies a slow death
As it mourns the loss of love
Never understanding it’s very being
Is created in the heavens above
How can it be reconciled
To LOVE, the creator of life
If the heart still remains
In unforgiveness and strife?
The Great lesson in life’s purpose
What we are sent here to learn
Is how to love God and our neighbor
Before we return
So what’s more valuable to you
Is it LOVE or is it pride?
because a heart without LOVE
Has already died!
And understand that if pride
Is the one you will choose
There are many generations to follow
Who have everything to lose!
Ask LOVE to return once again
And invade every crevice of your heart
Seek the courage to make amends
Let LOVE give you a new start!
We all have a story, all of value and great worth. My story involves a family riddled with generational pain, tragedy and war. Each new generation is born into “A Broken Family Tree”. Thus inspiring the poem I wrote back in 2001 called
“A Broken Family Tree”
Lori A. McBride (Cain)
A Broken Family Tree
I am one of many
Small branches of a broken tree
Always looking to the ones above
For guidance, strength and security.
One little branch trying
To keep the others from breaking away
Who will fall?
And who will stay?
Now I stand alone
Looking at the earth through the rain
And I see the broken branches I knew
Scattered about me in pain.
There are those who have taken an axe
To the root of our very foundation
And who have passed this destruction
Down to every new generation.
If I could take that axe
I would toss it deep into the sea
Never to return again
To harm the generations that follow me.
I am one of many
But alone I will go
And plant the new seeds
Where a beautiful tree will grow.
As I have suddenly stumbled upon many links where my poem has been shared I am finding more and more that I am not alone in this story. It seems we all share a place in the “Broken Family Tree”. We all are significant, vital branches. Each one making up their own unique story in The Masters Book. The great Author of time and His broken branches being grafted in.
I have come to realize that this is no small problem. The suffering is world wide and the breaking down of the family unit, with its values, morals and truth has become a catastrophic anomaly which is a deviation or departure from the normal or common order, form, or rule. Leading society away from the divine purpose of family intended. For me personally, I have opinions and thoughts. Even my own experience in the destruction, but in the end its my FAITH that supersedes It all. even my own experiences are just my perception alone. I don’t know what will surface here or where I plan to go with this blog. What I do know is that it will be truthful and real. I am an open book, but that doesn’t mean the rest of my family, friends and people of my past are. Therefore I will be as open as I can without bringing someone else’s personal life into it.
And so, another story unfolds.
With much love,
Lori
A Broken Family Tree 