Families
13/01/16 05:22
I am on mailing and email lists for lots of different individuals and organizations. I confess that I often toss mail unopened and move emails to the trash without reading them. Continual sorting has become a way of life for me. There is one advantage to all of the junk in my mailboxes, however. Once in a while I end up reading something that I didn’t mean to read. There are some clever tricks that are employed to get my attention and sometimes they work. That means that from time to time I read ideas and appeals from those who see the world differently than I do. They rarely convince me of their point of view, but it does no harm for me to try to understand someone who sees the world differently. If I were to surround myself only with opinions with which I agreed and people who think like me, I might become insensitive to the rest of the world.
The other day, cleaning out a few items from my mailbox that I had previously set aside I read an appeal from someone who was raising money for their group that purported to be strengthening families. It was clear that the group had a vision of the ideal family and were alarmed that there are many children who grow up in families that don’t fit their norm. The norm for which they were striving was two married heterosexual parents in their first marriage. While I fit that description and our children grew up in that kind of family, I am aware that there are many different sizes and shapes of families in our community.
On the surface, the family in which I grew up was pretty much in alignment with the norm of the organization who sent me the letter. I was the middle child in a family with three sisters, three brothers and two parents. But if you were to look closer, you might realize that there were four adopted children in that family and the last two were biological children of the first adopted daughter. It’s rather complex and when I try to explain it to folks, I sometimes say, “If my brother’s uncle is my uncle than I am my own uncle.”
You don’t have to figure that out. It is simply the case that there are a lot of different kinds of families in our communities. When I look out at the congregation I serve, I see a young girl living with her mother. The father of the young girl died when she was an infant and she never knew life with two parents. I see a divorced mother struggling with two sons. I see a family that attends church together even though the parents are separated. I see children who come to church with grandparents, whose parents we barely know. I’ve been asked to testify at custody and child support hearings simply because I know the church attendance patterns of some of the parties to the disputes.
This isn’t just anecdotal evidence from my life. The statistics back me up. Fewer than half (46%) of U.S. kids younger than 18 years of age are living in a home with two married parents on their first marriage. Nearly half (44%) of people ages 18-29 have a step-sibling.
So I can’t see the world the same way as the organization that assumes that it is the norm for children to grow up in any particular size or shape of family. From a statistical standpoint, our family with us in our first marriage of nearly 43 years, two children (one male and one female) who are both married, and two grandchildren (one male and one female), is the anomaly.
I spend enough of my time with people who are struggling with issues arising from family dysfunction to know that those struggles are real and the pain they experience is real and that no one should berate them because their family seems uniquely dysfunctional or, worse yet, that they don’t even deserve to be called a family.
I have decided that there is no “normal” or “typical” family. The children whose parents aren’t married are precious gifts of God and we celebrate their births and seek to support their parents. The reconfigured families with kids that are “his,” “hers,” and “ours” are one of the sources of the next generation of leadership of our community. The kids who have never known their biological father, including the ones who don’t get along with mom’s current boyfriend, have much to contribute to our life together. If your family is just you and your uncle with a beard so long that he can sit on it, your experience is just as valid and meaningful as people who live in neat houses with white picket fences and one dog and one cat. And if you get creative, the family stickers you put on the back of your SUV might be more interesting than most of the ones I see when I drive around town. Who knows? Maybe your uncle will teach you something about resiliency that will make you more productive in your life than those who have known other privileges.
Our faith carries with it a wonderful story from the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in which Joseph questions whether or not he should marry Mary the mother of Jesus. With the paternity of her child in question, he considered a quick divorce. An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph, calmed his fears and convinced him to proceed with the formation of his family. It is a story to which I refer, from time to time, when counseling with families facing unplanned births. We also have inherited the story of Ruth and the baby born to her and Boaz upon which the genealogy of King David and later Jesus depends. The Bible is filled with families that don’t meet the “norms” of the group who sent me the letter.
I decided to toss the letter and let them raise their funds from other sources. I’m more interested in the real families in our congregation than the “ideal” families they describe.
The other day, cleaning out a few items from my mailbox that I had previously set aside I read an appeal from someone who was raising money for their group that purported to be strengthening families. It was clear that the group had a vision of the ideal family and were alarmed that there are many children who grow up in families that don’t fit their norm. The norm for which they were striving was two married heterosexual parents in their first marriage. While I fit that description and our children grew up in that kind of family, I am aware that there are many different sizes and shapes of families in our community.
On the surface, the family in which I grew up was pretty much in alignment with the norm of the organization who sent me the letter. I was the middle child in a family with three sisters, three brothers and two parents. But if you were to look closer, you might realize that there were four adopted children in that family and the last two were biological children of the first adopted daughter. It’s rather complex and when I try to explain it to folks, I sometimes say, “If my brother’s uncle is my uncle than I am my own uncle.”
You don’t have to figure that out. It is simply the case that there are a lot of different kinds of families in our communities. When I look out at the congregation I serve, I see a young girl living with her mother. The father of the young girl died when she was an infant and she never knew life with two parents. I see a divorced mother struggling with two sons. I see a family that attends church together even though the parents are separated. I see children who come to church with grandparents, whose parents we barely know. I’ve been asked to testify at custody and child support hearings simply because I know the church attendance patterns of some of the parties to the disputes.
This isn’t just anecdotal evidence from my life. The statistics back me up. Fewer than half (46%) of U.S. kids younger than 18 years of age are living in a home with two married parents on their first marriage. Nearly half (44%) of people ages 18-29 have a step-sibling.
So I can’t see the world the same way as the organization that assumes that it is the norm for children to grow up in any particular size or shape of family. From a statistical standpoint, our family with us in our first marriage of nearly 43 years, two children (one male and one female) who are both married, and two grandchildren (one male and one female), is the anomaly.
I spend enough of my time with people who are struggling with issues arising from family dysfunction to know that those struggles are real and the pain they experience is real and that no one should berate them because their family seems uniquely dysfunctional or, worse yet, that they don’t even deserve to be called a family.
I have decided that there is no “normal” or “typical” family. The children whose parents aren’t married are precious gifts of God and we celebrate their births and seek to support their parents. The reconfigured families with kids that are “his,” “hers,” and “ours” are one of the sources of the next generation of leadership of our community. The kids who have never known their biological father, including the ones who don’t get along with mom’s current boyfriend, have much to contribute to our life together. If your family is just you and your uncle with a beard so long that he can sit on it, your experience is just as valid and meaningful as people who live in neat houses with white picket fences and one dog and one cat. And if you get creative, the family stickers you put on the back of your SUV might be more interesting than most of the ones I see when I drive around town. Who knows? Maybe your uncle will teach you something about resiliency that will make you more productive in your life than those who have known other privileges.
Our faith carries with it a wonderful story from the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in which Joseph questions whether or not he should marry Mary the mother of Jesus. With the paternity of her child in question, he considered a quick divorce. An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph, calmed his fears and convinced him to proceed with the formation of his family. It is a story to which I refer, from time to time, when counseling with families facing unplanned births. We also have inherited the story of Ruth and the baby born to her and Boaz upon which the genealogy of King David and later Jesus depends. The Bible is filled with families that don’t meet the “norms” of the group who sent me the letter.
I decided to toss the letter and let them raise their funds from other sources. I’m more interested in the real families in our congregation than the “ideal” families they describe.