Monday, November 24, 2003

Getting ready to head to Tenny in 24 hours to see moi famille for T-giving. Like most of yours, our families are so splattered about that, within the twenty four hours that is toikey day, we will have had to go to four different locations for four of the same dinners. Shew!

Oh, and, we're freaks down there too, although our friends and fam are a bit polite about it and just accept us as we are (we think). But we know they don't understand why we are up here doing this crazy church planting stuff way up "north" and why we aren't pumpin' out the yung-unz and settling in down in Big Orange country. Sometimes with where God has brought us, it's pretty hard to share about the inner healing, the maturational growth and the God-stuff going on all around us because there's no frame of reference for them to understand. And I'm not being narrow on this or condescending.....it's just that we're at different places and callings, I would suppose.

As you know, going back to your family system of origin is no easy thing. In fact, you come back just plain stressed out sometimes. I think that when God effects some healing in your life and you go back into the same stagnant, cyclical system of familial woundedness, you only stir them up and GET stirred up in return because you want to fix them. You want them to experience the same freedom you are in the process of receiving. But sometimes they only look at you like you got a third eye in your noggin. And you come back......and they stay, literally and figuratively, in the same habitual patterns of defeat.

Makes me wonder how- after seminary, etc.,- those in ministry are "called" back to where they grew up, to where mom and pop still abide. I'm not saying it's a bad thing or God doesn't call us back home, I just know Cathy and I have struggled in the past with the family "thing" and that every longing to go back home may not be a calling. We've had to sever some unhealthy family dependency issues at the bud. Had we not, we would have missed our calling and our present place. We just simply need to be willing to look at some of the unhealthy emotional bondage issues that we assign a more noble significance when they might be a sign of our instability. Seems Jesus had some stuff to say about family ties too, so I defer to Him.

We only harbor love for our family (or what's left of them). I don't know if it's that we're without honor in our own "country" (and it really is country), but I know we can't stay there for long. Here is where we live, move and have our being.

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