The holidays, for the most part, are over. Today I have talked to some good friends who I haven't seen in a bit and am looking forward to seeing more. Uncertain as to what to do with myself, I experiment with my new wah pedal and in a delusion of grandeur driven by the euphoria I get from making cool new sounds with old chord progressions I imagine playing crazy funk music from the 70's. In the quiet after my distortion addled guitar playing slows down, my thoughts turn again to family, to this holiday time.
Like my first note about Friendship and the fear of losing it, this note is one that starts on the surface and cuts deeper and deeper...because I'm not interested in wasting people's time with all of the crap on the surface and the " 'Howdy David, How Are You Doing?' 'I'm doing just fine thank you very much' " type nonsense we spout endlessly to each other's faces while beneath it our secret concerns and fears writhe in our hearts like worms.
I have been troubled this holiday season. My definition of what a family is has been challenged. My love for my family has been challenged (by myself).
What is a family? The American Heritage Dictionary defines a family as
n. pl. fam·i·lies
1. A fundamental social group in society typically consisting of one or two parents and their children.
2. Two or more people who share goals and values, have long-term commitments to one another, and reside usually in the same dwelling place.
3. A group of like things; a class.
4. A group of individuals derived from a common stock: the family of human beings.
2. All the members of a household under one roof.
3. A group of persons sharing common ancestry. See Usage Note at collective noun.
4. Lineage, especially distinguished lineage.
5. A locally independent organized crime unit, as of the Cosa Nostra.
1. A group of like things; a class.
2. A group of individuals derived from a common stock: the family of human beings.
What does the Scripture say about families? What are they?
Family is totally referenced to in the bloodline sense in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, Christ radically alters the idea of what a family is in Mark 3:31-34:
31Then Jesus' mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. 32A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, "Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you." 33"Who are my mother and my brothers?" he asked. 34Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! 35Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother."
There is another version of the same thing in Luke, the book of the Gospel my bible study has gone through recently (chapter 8 verse 20 or something like that). This definition has shaken me up and made me realize some things about how I feel regarding holidays and holiday breaks.
You see, I can't stand them (the holiday breaks). The reason has to do with what I see as a family. As I have been here at school, developing in close fellowship with many Brothers and Sisters in Christ, it has become ever apparent to me where my true family is and where my true home is. My home is here. My family is here. And when holidays and breaks come, my family goes away, and I am forced to spend time with strangers who do not know me or people I know all too well and would avoid were we not bound by blood or marriage. My actual family goes away and I am alone with this "real" one.
This realization of how I have felt on the inside and why it is I felt that way has strangely turned everything on its head to me. What is my "family" then, the one that I am bound to through marriages and blood? Are they people who I need no longer deal with? Some kind of vestigial appendix-like group of people who can be cut away and forgotten? Sometimes, I really wish it were true. Have you ever fantasized about being married and letting your significant other have his/her family there but totally no one from yours? I have. Ever thought about how great it would be to disappear, change your phone number, your address, you email, move somewhere far away, get married, and raise a family without anyone else in your blood family knowing? I have. If I ever have a partner, I dread the day of introducing her to my family. I don't want them to have anything to do with my family that I make. This isn't bragging. This isn't anything to be talking about to people publicly like this. This is sad. This shouldn't be how I think about my family, but God help me it is.
My family is a reminder of a past that I was all to eager to leave behind me when I went to college. When I went to school, I went eagerly, hoping that THIS time things would be finally different, the cords would be cut. In many ways I am disappointed and more than a little outraged that I cannot escape that cultural gravity that draws me back every year kicking, and screaming. And I'm a damn American! America, more than any country, is a place where families are very separate, but no, it's not enough for me. I couldn't imagine being from any other culture where family is EVERYTHING. I think I would truly go nuts if I had to go back to being close to my family all of the time. I'd wind up on the way to the loony bin in a straight jacket, foaming at the mouth as I went.
I had an epiphany even more jarring than my realization that what I have that most people call a "family" but is not actually my real family at all. It was the realization that my "family" of blood and marriage loves me in many ways, but in the case of many people I do not love them back. At all. That is a serious problem, from a practical standpoint as a human being who exists in a social network, but more importantly as a Christian who knows he is supposed to let the love of Christ shine.
I am not sure what to do about that. I mean, oh yes, there is the obvious "right" answer of seeing my family as an opportunity to show God's love and all of that. But I don't even want to BE there. I want to find every excuse I can to get the hell out of Dodge.
I am a very loyal person. I'm like a dog in human flesh as far as that is concerned, but like a dog I give my loyalty to the ones who feed me tasty table scraps and scratch me behind the ears. And nobody gives better food or scratches better than the family of heaven. Nobody. Keep in mind here I'm not talking about people just giving me what I want, but giving me what I need, which is love, so I guess my dog example wasn't perfect....or maybe it was, because my loyalty can be conditional. Anyway, when I go back to a place where people, frankly, suck at loving each other, it's no wonder that, like a dog, I want to get outta there and run away. There's a song by Audioslave called "Nothing Left To Say But Goodbye" that almost completely sums up my experience with Christians at college (and complements the dog metaphor):
ust like the rescue of a stray dog in the rain/ I was hungry when you found me/ You can tell by my tail and my rib cage/ what had once been around me"
"Bless your heart you gave me a home and a new start/ and I will leave you never/ sleep at your feet and stand guard at your front door/I will keep this together"
I thought I had dusted off the ashes of my ruined family and found something new, and I did. Anyway, as I have developed a new family here, I have been cutting my bloodlines, choking them off. My blood family is like a leg that has become gangrenous because I've been clamping off its blood flow in some mad attempt to have it removed, like one of those crazy people who thinks their life would be SO GREAT if they could just have X limb removed (yes, this is a mental disorder that actually exists).
I'm at a loss as to how I'm supposed to deal with this whole thing. Every holiday I walk away going, "Well thank God it's over and I can go back to school and ministry." Is that right? Is that OK? I don't know. But I'm going to keep digging deeper.
Even worse than this indecision and not knowing how to handle this whole problem is the questions it raises about me. These questions stem from this desire: I want to be a family man...
I'm a walking paradox, aren't I? And given all of my wonderful attitudes about family, what odds are you going to give me that, provided I ever have one, I'll be able to hold it together when it seems like I'm always looking for an Exit light? But I figure I'll do better than what my "family" has done. Every broken home survivor thinks that. I'm no different. But I'm afraid. I'm afraid I'm like the next sucker who comes into America with a dream and the heart and will to make it happen but winds up scrubbing toilets for the rest of his life. I've seen it happen to people. It's ugly.
I'm going to excavate even deeper, though, because I feel that there is more to expose to the light. When (if) I have a family of my own, what does this attitude of mine towards my blood family mean? Does this mean that when people get screwed up, I walk away? Do I say "Screw this I'm out of here" and leave those people behind to rot, too? Where does the disownment stop? At what point do I stop being a reasonable guy who's trying to avoid the fallout and become a coward? Was this disownment of the heart OK in the first place, or am I being a coward now, too? Turn the other cheek. Stand up and fight. What do I do? I have completed my excavation of myself and THE question in its entirety that makes me afraid, the monolithic fear underneath all of it is this: WHAT IF I CAN'T STOP DISOWNING PEOPLE IN MY HEART, AND WORSE, WHAT IF I TRY TO DISOWN GOD?
Oh yeah. Now we're getting somewhere. The truth of my fears and my thoughts is like somebody that fell out of the Ugly Tree and hit every stick on the way down.
This isn't over yet. I have a lot of work to do here. This is only the opening scene, the introduction of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (if you haven't seen that movie, do yourself a favor and ask me if you can borrow it ;D ). I still haven't worked out any answers, and I smell a sequel to this note coming at some point soon, the way you smell an oncoming thunderstorm in July that's knotted like a fist, purple like a bruise, rumbling like an earthquake, and flashing like a drawn sword. I'm not finished yet, I want answers and I'm going to get them.
...hopefully when I share them with you I won't be quite so melodramatic. If I know myself as well as I hope I do, I'll be writing the follow up very soon, because this is something I'm not going to let go.
Peace in Christ,
-David
No comments:
Post a Comment