Life is Better with Family

Living separated from family is nothing new to me, although it was only a romantic exploratory notion until I started college. Even then, though, I had a strong lifeline back at home where I returned most weekends during my first two years. A lifeline I enjoyed because I loved my family! Even so, when 20, I took my first truly big step and moved across the country for art school. A three day drive or three hour flight away. The sense of freedom and discovery was exhilarating. At that time I really began to 'find myself' outside the family circle.

Or so I believed.

Family is such a strong concept that I soon created a family of friends and then moved into a 'group house' where we lived as brothers and sisters. It was a rather safe and benign semi-communal experience. We enjoyed the relaxed inter-denominational Christian fellowship that 'His House' generated but we also stumbled over a few relational issues as we tried to determine how to live in harmony with one another. All but two of the initial group of seven at the house when I moved in were art students. In our twenties, all of us were professing Christians. And naively this was all we thought we needed to get along.

When I left, it was because my family back home in Texas was going through a transition that I felt I should be part of. I was sad to leave my family of friends, and all that had become 'my life' and found it a bit difficult to blend back into the 'familiar yet different' family I had left.

This is a common experience for all of us who leave home and return. Life goes on in our absence and it takes a while to get back in step again. However, even when we do, our dance style is changed by our own experiences. Something that requires a degree of understanding by those we return to whether we are moving in or just visiting!

How amazing this dance of life is. All the ins and outs that mold and shape us. The decisions we make, good and bad and indifferent. They all leave a mark that we can either ignore, lament or embrace. It is what is life. It is what is growth.

And dare I say, it is what is family.

Healthy families celebrate each other. Even when we change. Even as it changes!

I have been on the child side of the leaving and learning to fly. I have been the immigrant side of learning and adapting. I have been on the returning side of re-learning and re-adapting. I have been on the alone side because of my husband's regular business interstate and international travel. I have been on the 'beloved' side as I have said difficult final farewells to cherished loved ones. I have been on the parent side of nurturing and teaching and letting go. 

That is what healthy families do. They change just as their members do. They breathe in and out. They comfort and release. They challenge and regroup. It can be difficult, but loving families do not withhold, chastise, shame, shun or hold captive.

Sadly, this post and layout is prompted by the knowledge of a family who is grappling with a 'lost' family member. A single, sweet 26 year old granddaughter, daughter and sister who has been caught up with a group who has cut her off from her family and friends. A group that seems to be teaching her to develop a disdain for her family and turn them away. There is fear that she is being restrained in order to break her loyalty and fondness for her family. The leaders of this group seem bent on redefining her familial memories and loyalties as wicked, all in the name of God while also denying her family access to her. It is a particularly insidious process that seems to be the way of cults in particular. The way of separation, confusion, conflict and ultimately of control.

I am so grateful that in my idealistic forays as a young woman exploring the breadth of the world in order to find my place in it that I was protected from groups like these (although I was aware that some brushed very closely to me). Please join me in praying that this young lady, Catherine, would break free of this group and once again be embraced by her family that love her so.

Because life is better with family.



Layout designed with freebies from various designers in the Digi Scrap Parade blog hop over the past weekend.