There is a web to be woven here. Not one of deceit, but one of beauty and cherishing and healing and wholeness. But right now I just have the individual strands, and I'm trying to discern which thread to pick up first, and to anticipate how they will all join together.
Family can be so hard. Being in a family is hard. Coming from a family is hard. Finding your place in a family is hard. Brene Brown, in her book
Rising Strong, says:
"I can't think of a better way to describe what it feels like to try and get your head and heart around who you are and where you come from than wrestling a greased pig in the dark. Our identities are always changing and growing, they're not meant to be pinned down. Our histories are never all good or all bad, and running from the past is the surest way to be defined by it. That's when it owns us. The key is bringing light to the darkness - developing awareness and understanding."
Wrestling a greased pig in the dark. She's right isn't she? That's what it feels like. How do we truly come to know ourselves? How do we learn to separate our individual self from our family of origin and figure out where they end and we begin? Is it even possible to truly exist as an individual in isolation from our families? When so much of who I am and how I react and the ways in which I view the world and how I choose to exist in it - it all stems out of the person I was growing
into as I was simultaneously growing
out of this collective identity of family. Wrestling a greased pig in the dark, for sure.
It is so easy to blame every thing I don't like about the human I am today on the flaws and failures of the family I grew up in. As if none of it could possibly be my own fault. And coupled with the pain from the wounds inflicted by family, which somehow plunge the deepest yet are the slowest to heal, I now have a cocktail of blame and bitterness and resentment towards those who first gave, and shaped, my life. At best, this cocktail is 'simply' explosive in its retaliatory wounding; at worst, it is lethal to the relationship.
Jesus, forgive me.
It took a Christmas song to wake me up. Sleeping At Last wrote a beautiful Christmas song called "
Snow." There's no way I'd be able to describe it with any measure of justice, so you should just go listen yourself. It is absolutely beautiful, and it is beautifully sad. As I listened to this song, I found myself grieving a loss so deep and soul-shifting that I couldn't keep the tears from streaming down my face. And I haven't even experienced this loss yet! There was no single lyric that jumped out and caught my attention; rather, it was several phrases in the song, and the feel of the song, and the author's shared thoughts on why he wrote the song (podcast
here) that touched my heart so definitively.
And woke me up to the realization that I have a finite number of innocent Christmases left.
One day, Christmas will bring with it a heartbreak so great that I may not even want to celebrate at all. How many have known a grief so unbearable that they felt like just canceling Christmas altogether? Whether it is the death of a parent or sibling or spouse, or family brokenness that rends the heart in two, or the loss of a child even through something as beautiful as marriage? Right now, everyone I love still has a place around the table, and a stocking hanging from their hook, and gathers with us around the tree. I haven't lost a single one, and I don't have to share them either.
But one day my innocent Christmas will be destroyed by death or loss. No matter how viciously I fight the thought, our perfect Christmases are numbered. And one day they will be tainted with the stench of death and loss. Maybe they will usher in with them a new kind of beauty, but the stench no doubt will continue to fill our senses too.
Why did no one tell me this sooner?
How many Christmases have I wasted? How many do I have left?
And how many other perfect moments do I continue to waste on bitterness and blame and resentment?
I know, 'perfect' may not seem like the right word to use. Because rarely are any of our Christmases perfect - much less our everyday moments. But I wonder if one day I will remember them as perfect simply because we were all present. Because our world hadn't shifted off its axis yet. Because I'd take hearing them say just about anything if it meant I got to hear their voice just one more time.
So, today, and with the moments I have left, what if somehow I could learn to show up and be present myself? Wrestle my own greasy pig in the darkness of my own shame and failure and vulnerability and fear, and then show up, bringing the light of awareness and understanding with me, the light of grace. Keep wrestling my way through the bad in my history and choose to embrace the innumerable moments of good. And treasure the fragile moments I have each every day with each and every one I love. Before these numbered Christmases run out.
Lord, as I wrestle my own greasy pig, and try to capture the threads of my own who I am
and where I come from
, may the web I weave become a masterpiece of gratitude and grace. And may I show up for every moment of the mess.
