Family was meant to be an echo of Eden—a taste of heaven here on earth. A place where you are fully known and fully accepted. A safe garden where love flows freely, without fear or shame. But if we’re honest, that’s not most of our lived experience.
Life is hard. Parenting is difficult. No family is perfect. (Ours for sure isn’t).
The story of Eden doesn’t end in perfection. It includes the mess. The shame. The hiding. (This article is part of the Building A Healthy Family Culture series – Read part 1 here).
When Adam and Eve sinned, their first instinct was to hide. That’s human nature. We cover up, self-protect, shut down, withdraw. And honestly, in a fallen world, that instinct isn’t all bad. God wired us with a self-preservation switch. It’s how we survive when life feels unsafe.
But survival mode was never meant to be the culture of our families.
Family was never meant to be a place where we have to keep our guard up. It was meant to be the one place where our hearts are free to be seen and safe to be known. A place where love isn’t earned, but given. Where failure isn’t met with fear, but grace.
And even though we may not have grown up with that kind of family—you can build one. You can create a family culture of openness and vulnerability. Of love and acceptance. Not perfect, but real.
But do you remember God’s response to Adam and Eve’s shame in the Garden? God moved towards them in their sin and shame. Though He would have known the sin they committed, God chose to pursue them by walking through the Garden and calling out to them. God is not rebelled by your brokenness! He is drawn toward you with a desire to heal. The prophet Isaiah says that Jesus was anointed with the Spirit of God to blind up, repair and heal the self-protected, closed, broken heart.
In the Garden, God takes His pursuit up to the next level. As Adam and Eve are physically hiding their shame with man made, self-protecting leaves from a fig tree, God commits an act of grace. He makes clothes from them from an animal and covers their vulnerability.
Healing Starts With Our Response
As God continues to actively pursue us, it matters how we respond.
God will not force His way into your heart. The healing starts with allowing God into the places in your heart where shame still lingers. Where self-protection still rules. Where you’ve believed that if people really knew you, they wouldn’t love you.
But God already knows you. And He moves toward you, not away from you. He doesn’t shame you—He covers you.
David G. Benner, in his book Surrender to Love: Discovering the Heart of Christian Spirituality, emphasizes that unconditional love transforms us when we receive it in vulnerability. He says that “love is transformational only when it is received in vulnerability.”
Benner suggests that embracing our true selves and presenting our raw emotions before God in prayer fosters a genuine encounter, allowing divine love to heal our deepest wounds. This process of being fully known and fully accepted in our vulnerability leads to profound personal transformation.
That means that God’s love is transformative—but only where we let it in.
Responding Like God to Vulnerability
Adam and Eve were created to experience the life-giving flow of God’s love and then to be a channel of God’s love to their children. The fall brought sin into the world and cut off their access to God’s love. They were also blocked from returning to Eden.
Because of Christ, you have been given direct access to the love of God through the Holy Spirit. As you open your heart to His unconditional love, you begin to reflect that love in your parenting. You become an echo of God’s goodness in your kids’ worst moments. You model what it means to live with an open and vulnerable heart—and you invite your children into that same kind of freedom.
In your spouse’s and children’s moments of brokenness, you have the sacred opportunity to emulate the heart of God. You can be a channel of healing in your home. As they take the risk to live openly and vulnerably, your response can reflect God’s love—covering their shame, tending to their wounds with compassion, and creating a safe place for restoration.
Over time, something beautiful begins to happen. The walls come down. Hearts open. Real love flows. And your family becomes a little oasis in the midst of the desert. No, we’ll never fully recreate Eden—but we can taste its fruit.
Living with an open and vulnerable heart is like fertilizer to the soil of a healthy, uncommon family culture—nourishing deep attachment and emotional safety. But for it to thrive, love must be mutual and balanced with respect, honor, and healthy structure.
(Coming Soon | Love & Order: Two Pillars to an Uncommonly Healthy Family)
The Randalls 
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