Family, Brokenness, and Acceptance

Wow, I just checked out my blog stats and I am nearly on 8000 views of this blog! A MASSIVE thank you to you, yes YOU, who is reading this and who keeps me writing. I am honoured by your presence here and the fact that you find me interesting enough to keep reading.

If you are new here I recommend reading my blog post 'My Story' in order to understand where I am coming from on various issues. I make a lot more sense with a little background knowledge going on. 

I have been pretty slack at these blog posts recently as I am currently writing my Masters thesis and that tends to take up a lot of my time. As well as that I run a small group for young adults (hence the various blogs with flowcharts) so the planning for that can (or should) take up some of my time too. But enough excuses, let's get on with the show.

I have up until today refrained from talking at length about my relationship with my family. This has been for several reasons.

1) I have felt that it is unfair to share my issues without them having a proper chance to respond.

2) Talking to a bunch of strangers (no offence guys) is perhaps not the best way to deal with some issues.

Yesterday however, I watched a Dr. Phil show that really hit a nerve. It was portraying a family of three children who were desperate to make contact with their dad but he kept making excuses. Though they all proclaimed love for their father they were furious at him and he couldn't understand why they kept yelling at him if they wanted a relationship.

That's not what struck me.

There was a young girl, 17yo, who said that if she could have anything it would be to be able to call her dad, talk about her problems, do fun things with him, and have him as her confidant. 

It was a heartfelt plea.

It was also a major cause of the problem.

I say this because I truly believe that the world has told us what a 'perfect' family should look like. I am not talking about a mum, a dad, and 2.5 kids. What I am talking about is the 'Simpsons' idea. 

Family is dysfunctional, the Simpsons tells us, but ultimately everyone will get along. By the end of the half hour dad will have realised his mistake and apologised, mum would've realised she loves the silly man after all, the kids will realise they are being little terrors and stop, and everyone will live happily ever after...well at least until the next episode. 

This is pretty much how every family works on TV sitcoms. It is what I grew up on, what most of my generation grew up on, and it has, I believe, warped our understanding of the nature of humanity.

See, people can suck. I mean really suck. The number of solo parent families out there would suggest that mum and dad, or partner, or whatever, don't always figure it out. The number of abused kids would suggest that parents don't always like their children. The number of runaways would suggest that kids don't always like their parents.

Because we are broken. Though we all yearn for the love of our family, we live a world where people are broken, where we are broken, and it isn't so easy to reconcile our differences. 

I love my family. Not a day goes by when I don't think about my parents. But I haven't seen or talked to them for two years. We have issues. My brokenness has affected them and their brokenness has affected me. My parents weren't perfect, but neither were they awful and neglectful. We just found that some of our difficulties were too big for us to be able to work through in a way that we both agreed on.

It breaks my heart that things ended up this way between us. I can't tell you how much I would love to pick up the phone and have a nice, happy conversation with my dad.

But that isn't our reality.

Our reality is that things are broken. There are no credits that will role after a family hug. There is no canned laughter that will play when we all realise that we misunderstood each other. There is no being able to run into each others arms in slow motion when we see each other again.

There is love, but it is a love tainted by our issues.

And that is what hit me about the young girls story on Dr. Phil. She had in her head this idea of what she believed was the perfect father-daughter relationship. But it was clear from the program that the father had no intention, or ability, to be this father. She wanted a fantasy instead of accepting the reality, no matter how painful that might be.

My mother-in-law once told me that relationships only work when we lower our expectations of people. We need to stop imagining what we want in someone and accept the reality of what our relationship with them really is. Sometimes it means walking away and letting the relationship go. Sometimes it means having to work damn hard at ourselves and at a relationship, but this is only possible if both parties are willing to try and work at it. And sometimes, in those wonderful moments, it means accepting what is and living in the love that is offered and accepted.

But let me get one thing straight: acceptance and forgiveness are NOT the same as reconciliation. We can accept the reality of a broken relationship. We can even learn to forgive the hurts and the pain that are caused within that relationship. But that does not mean that reconciliation will, or can, happen.

I have forgiven my parents for any hurt, real or imagined, that they caused me. I know this because I am not angry at them any more. For years I was. I was bitter and twisted about every little thing that I remembered them doing (or not doing). It ate me up inside. I would rant and rage against them for hours at a time. We would have screaming matches and things were said that I regret. Things were heard that I have now let go of. I learnt to forgive them and love them as human beings who did their very best to love me as they knew how. I pray for the all the time and hold them very dear in my heart.

But we do not have a relationship. The reasons for that I am choosing not to go into in this forum but I will say that it is because we have been unable to agree upon a 'safe zone' for us to work out our issues. Sometimes relationships need outside help, sometimes it is not emotionally (or even physically) safe to step back into the same situation without boundaries and safety being established first. Sometimes reconciliation doesn't happen. And that is ok.

Forgiveness does also not demand forgetting. The old adage 'forgive and forget' has done so much harm to people in relationships that are toxic. We CANNOT forget. It is impossible to forget. So what we are told to do is sweep our issues under the carpet and pretend they never happened. This leads to cycles of destruction in relationships. Ever wonder why an abused woman goes back to her abuser? Because she chose to ignore past behavior instead of letting it help her determine what will happen in the future. Sometimes the only way to find healing is to leave the environment that perpetuates old behaviors. And sometimes forgiveness cannot happen until we choose to NOT forget what has happened before and instead face it, address it, and, if need be, walk away from it until it changes.

It is ok to learn to forgive and not be reconciled. In a perfect world we could do that, but this isn't a perfect world and we are far from perfect people. We do what we can, we try as hard as possible, and then we have to learn to accept what is. And sometimes what exists is a relationship broken beyond repair. Or one that needs more time to heal.

You can forgive and learn to love without relationship being reestablished.

If you have a difficult relationship with your family members, you are not alone! There are so many of us out there who are longing for the love of parent/sibling/spouse/child. There are so many of us who weep for what we dreamed could have been and for the reality of what is.

We understand. You are not alone. 

My prayers are with all families. They are with every broken person who prays for a miracle and yet despairs that it will never come. They are with every person who misses someone they love because of the brokenness of their relationship.

May God give you peace and may you know God as your parent who loves you and comforts you. May you know Joy.