Are you caught in a web or cycle of the negative? Was it handed down to you?

You know, we inherit or learn various traits from those who have gone before us and those who raised us. It’s not all behavioristic: Just as we acquire physical traits, so do we inherit psychological, spiritual, and emotional ones.

It can be an emotion like depression. Dark, dark places. It can be a way of reacting to things. With sudden outbursts! It can be anything from timidity, shyness, and fear to egoism, selfishness, and narcissism (rampant in our YouTube era). Very often, it’s hidden pride: viewing others with judgmentalism while not purging our own failings (see today’s liturgical reading: “Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own? How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me remove that splinter in your eye,’ when you do not even notice the wooden beam in your own eye? You hypocrite!  Remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter in your brother’s eye.”).

As a preacher pointed out, this is often what the Bible calls “iniquity”: negative “sinful” prideful wicked traits or cycles that we have not brought upon ourselves but were born carrying.

There are families that can’t seem to succeed, that brabble over the smallest matters, wherein there is constant dismay. There are clans where gluttony has run of the house. It may be laziness, procrastination. These are traits that keep getting passed down and that keep us down. It may be a physiological “curse” such as infertility.

And it can go on and on from generation to generation until someone wakes up and steps up to break it (with Jesus).

“I am your Best Friend, as well as your King,” Jesus was once quoted by a mystic as saying. “Walk hand in Hand with Me through your life. Together we will face whatever each day brings: pleasures, hardships, adventures, disappointments. Nothing is wasted when it is shared with Me.”

The Lord can wipe all darkness away!

It may not have started with you, a cycle, but it can end with you—and subsequently with your children and grandchildren. Insecurity, bitterness. The negative traits that run in your family should stop once they run into you. Look at the curse on humankind that Christ fractured into pieces.

You can be the antidote to the poison instead of a carrier or victim of it.

Have the courage to make a difference.

This is a mission.

You can stop the plague.

Break the dysfunction. Break the hebetude with discipline. That is a key to much happiness: discipline. If there is procrastination, get up and do it. Do things now. If it’s overeating, find a challenge and joy in restraining yourself.

“My reasons for allowing these adversities may be shrouded in mystery, but My continual Presence with you is an absolute promise,” the Lord might say.

The power in you is greater than the power of this fallen world.

Each day, we should ask Christ to be with us for every single thought, word, circumstance, and action. Try that and you’ll be amazed at how much better the day goes.

There may still be problems. The day may be filled with them! But you’ll handle them in a different way because you’ll see them with different eyes and a new spirit.

There is joy with challenges when they are met with Jesus beside you.

No matter what seems to run in your family—poverty, alcoholism, stubbornness, dishonesty, sickness, even cancer—the cycle can be broken. But first you need to perceive it; you need to recognize it; you need to put away pride.

Simply: don’t do the negative things your family seems prone to; predisposed to.  Don’t be tempted to it.

With discipline, you can make sure the door is always closed to whatever it is.

Problems repeat until they are dispelled. It takes prayer, diligence, energy, and more prayer. Pray without ceasing.

Deactivate what is bad. Leave your family blessed.

“Trust Me in the depths of your being. It is there that I live in constant communion with you. Quiet your mind in My Presence. Then you will be able to hear Me bestowing the resurrection blessing: Peace be with you and your family.”

[resources: Life Missions, Family Healing]