When Home Is Hard

You didn't choose your parents, your house, or the volume of the arguments — you just woke up inside a family the way you wake up inside weather. When Home Is Hard is for every teenager who loves their people and still finds home hard to live in. It lives inside the tension honestly: God commands us to honor our fathers and mothers — it is one of the Ten Commandments — and honoring can feel impossible when the rules make no sense, the criticism never stops, or a parent is simply gone. Three words carry the whole book: Respect — treating parents with dignity even when you disagree; Speak — using your voice honestly without blowing the house up; Trust — resting in the Father in heaven who never fails. Twelve chapters cover the real stuff: the difference between hard and harmful, respect when you disagree, forgiving imperfect parents, the fact that Jesus had a family too, and how to pray for your parents when you'd rather not. It never tells you your pain doesn't matter, and it never tells you to stay quiet about being hurt. Parents: read it too. It was written for your teenager, but it might change the temperature of your whole house.

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