Family
What does family mean to you? Take a minute to maybe write down your own definition of a family. If you compare your definition with others, you would find both similarities and differences. For example, would your definition of family include:
- A friend or neighbor who is not a blood or legal relative
- An adopted or foster child
- Children who were once step-siblings after the remarried couple divorces
- A married couple without children
- A person who cannot live independently on their own
- A sibling who married outside the family’s religious faith and/or race
- A beloved family dog or cat
- The spouse of a deceased friend
You might be surprised to learn how others respond to these different family types. In fact, you might be surprised at how you
respond. What would be your reasoning
for including a particular family type or leaving them out? Defining who
is and is not family is foundational to your identity, communication, and how you live your life.
My personal definition of "family" includes all of the above. I would consider opening my home to a close friend or neighbor who might have lost their home to weather or fire related circumstances. An adopted or foster child that I have grown to love. Children who were once step-siblings and have no where else to turn (Lolly & I have one of those). A married couple with or without children who have lost everything and needs help. A person who cannot live independently on their own. I would not turn away a sibling who married outside my or the family’s religious faith or race. Inclusion of those who need help into my "family", whether or not they are "blood" relatives, is part of my belief, faith and trust in God.
Part of navigating life’s many challenges, finding and being welcomed
as part of a family is one of our most central needs and a gift we can offer to
others. We also take comfort in knowing there is no one way to be a
family. This knowledge helps us understand and appreciate families in
all their breadth and richness as they develop and change over the
course of their lives. Rather than put up roadblocks, we all have an
opportunity to benefit, learn from, and support families among our neighbors, community members, and among our own household and extended
family.
There is no perfect family, we do not have perfect parents, we do not marry a perfect person or we do not have perfect children. We have complaints from each other. We can not live together without offending one another. We are constantly disappointed. Yes for so many reasons at various times we are disappointed by one another.
There is no healthy marriage or healthy family without the exercise of forgiveness. Forgiveness is the medicine of family joy and happiness. Forgiveness is vital to our emotional health and spiritual survival. No matter the offense or who is the offender. Without forgiveness, the family becomes an arena of conflict and a fortress of evil. Without forgiveness, the family becomes sick and unhealthy. Forgiveness is the healer of the soul, the purification of the spirit and the liberation of the heart.
No sin is too big to be forgiven. He who does not forgive does not have peace in his soul and can not have communion with God. Unforgiving is Evil and a poison that intoxicates and kills the one who refuses to forgive. Keeping forgiveness in your heart is a self-destructive gesture. Those who do not forgive are physically, emotionally and spiritually ill.
For this reason, the family must be a place of life and not a place of death; a place of forgiveness, a place of paradise and not a place of hell; A healing territory and not a disease; an internship of forgiveness and not guilt. Forgiveness brings joy where sorrow has brought sadness; of Healing where sorrow has caused disease.
A family is a place of support and not of gossip and slander of one another. It must be a place of welcome not a place of rejection. Shame to those who plant evil about others. The individuals who form a family are not enemies. When anyone in a family is going through a challenge they need support of others in that family.
Home
What
images does your mind conjure up when you think of home? The house
where you grew up? Family? Friends? A city or town? The house where you
presently live? Or is home a state of mind?
When I think of home I think of love. It is where I get love and give love, freely with
no strings attached. Home to me, is not a “place” it is a
collective group of personal attitudes and emotions from the people around me that accept me and my life as it is,
with no apologies, no expectations and requiring no changes.
Home
is a feeling of belonging, where my beliefs are not held against me;
where my actions or inaction are not judged; where my words are not
manipulated or taken out of context. It's a place of peace and happiness
and a reflection of my identity.
Home is a place of caring and sharing. Caring that comes from the heart, based on God's love for us and our sharing of that love with those around us. Home is a place of caring and sharing with no expectations, judgements of past life experiences or restrictions.
My
concept of home has been shaped by culture, both my wife's culture and
mine, along with our families and experiences. Home is a
place where I can reflect on the past, a place where I can talk about
the present without fear of judgement, retribution or resentment and a place to dream about the future. Home is
that little slice of paradise that is completely my own. Home is also
something I am willing to share with those who try to understand me and
my life without judgement or resentment.
I left home when I was really just a boy of 18. Fresh out of High School
and classified "1A" for the Vietnam draft. I found that I could get an
education, see the world and possibly not have to engage in combat if I
enlisted in the Navy.
I spent 11 years in the Navy, I received an education in electronic and computer communications and networks that was recognized around the world. I traveled extensively throughout Asia and the Pacific. At one point, I was asked to participate in a special mission that would involve combat. I volunteered without hesitation or reluctance; willingly accepting the mission. Probably because I wasn't fully prepared for the intensity of wartime death and destruction, I fell into a deep state of depression upon returning to the US.
Because I was cogent of all the death and destruction I had done in the name of my country, and of my depression, I was ashamed of both. That made it hard for me to communicate with people, especially those who had no idea of what I experienced. I had few friends and it was very hard to make new ones. Two things kept me going for 8 years, phone calls to my Mother and I was really good at my job.
Then one day I walked into a Church and asked God for help. A few days later, I met a beautiful young woman who gave me a reason to live, and later, someone to love. My healing of heart, mind and soul started the day we met and continues.
In America ours is a culture of "Me and Mine" in my wife's country it is a culture of sharing. In America we put ourselves first, what's mine is mine, what's yours is yours. When Americans share they call it a good deed, pat themselves on the back for doing good. In my wife's country, sharing is a part of everyday life. You don't have to be family of even a friend to share or receive from those who share. "love your neighbor" is a way of life, not just a commandment we say should be followed. I've grown to adopt the sharing way of life. It's closer to the path that Jesus took when he walked the earth. It has made me and the people around me more tolerant of each other and more joyful.
Although I was not a Catholic at the time, I was married in the Catholic Church with a full Nuptial Mass.
It took a long time for us to find a Priest that would marry us, but
our persistence paid off. I had to attend a lot of meetings and classes.
At first I had a few misgivings about things I didn't fully understand
at that time, but my love for my future wife was much more powerful than
the misgivings. I was honest with myself, my future wife, the leaders
of the Church and with God.
My siblings
have called me a failure as a son and a brother because I did not come
back home when I was discharged from the Navy. To them I say, Read Genesis 2:23 & 24, Ephesians 5:31 and Matthew 19:5. I'm following God's plan, not my own.
Genesis 2:23 & 24 - And
the man said: “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she
shall be called ‘woman,’ for out of man she was taken.” For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.
“For this reason a man
shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two
shall become one flesh” is also Bible verse that appears in Ephesians 5:31 and Matthew 19:5.
God's
original plan for Man was for him to leave his parents and siblings and
start a new life with his wife who has become one with him through the
covenant of marriage witnessed by God. I didn't go home for two reasons. I was ashamed of the depression and what I had become, more animal than human. I did not want to put that burden on my family. I also had a job I liked and was good at and it paid close to 4 times my Navy salary.
My
siblings have called me an idol worshiper because I now have Catholic
beliefs. I was, along with my siblings, raised in a Baptist family.
After much study and reflection on my own life, I find Catholic beliefs
are no different from Baptist beliefs. The difference between Catholic
and Baptist is not in beliefs but in how we worship. Catholicism is more
spiritual than Baptist worship. To my siblings, I ask do you think of
our Mother, who was raised in a Catholic family, as an idol worshiper;
to my one sibling who married a Catholic man, do you think of him as an
idol worshiper, and how about your children who are Catholic, are they
idol worshipers?
My
siblings have said I should have known better than to voluntarily
enlist in the US Navy and volunteer to go to combat when asked. To that I
ask do you think that our father who was one of the first to hit the
beach at Attu Island in Alaska during WWII should have known better? How
about most of the men in our family of the previous generation, should
they have known better than to enlist in military service during WWII? To my sibling
who married a Vietnam Veteran, should he have known better? I'm proud
of my military service, every minute of it. Knowing what I know now, if I could turn back the clock, I would enlist all over again. So, go ahead and be like the young people during the Vietnam era throw your garbage at the uniform. I'll just ignore it and keep walking away.
My
siblings say I hate my Mother. I don't know where that comes from, my
Mother and I were very close, She kept me going during the time I was
suffering through a very deep depression. If it wasn't for my Mother, I
wouldn't be here posting this today, I would have succumb to the affects of my depression long before I met my wife.
My wife and I are under 2 Flags, from 2 Countries, of 2 Cultures, but of 1 Heart. Families should also be of one heart and that heart should be nurtured through love, respect for each other, caring for each other and sharing that love, respect and caring with all those we come in contact with. In my heart, mind and soul, family and home are both one and the same. Family is not people, Home is not a place; they are both feelings and emotions that are born out of respect, love and caring.
