Monday, May 20, 2013
Family
Family:
a. a basic social unit consisting of parents and their children, considered as a group, whether dwelling together or not: the traditional family.
b. a social unit consisting of one or more adults together with the children they care for: a single-parent family.
I often think about the concept of family.
We define that. For ourselves. For our children. For our experience.
Before I had children my "family" had a few definitions... I "defined" family as my relatives through my parents: brother, aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, etc. I also had a definition of family which encompassed those friends who were very close. Friends who had/have known me for better and for worse over years and years. And there was family as defined by God; my Christian "family."
Now that I'm a parent, now that I'm older, now that I have gone through both some tough and some wonderful experiences, family to me encompasses all that and more. My core family, my center, is of course myself and my children. And then beyond that... it's friends who have known me for years, and known the TRUE me good and bad... it's relatives, but then again maybe more specifically relatives who I can trust, relatives who I know are there for me/us through it all and not just looking from the outside unwilling to toss a rope when you are at the end of it... and it can also be recent friends who have battled through prayer and life with you as well.
But regardless the definition you have of family for you... our primal definition begins with what we learn as a child, those people we live with, the ones we call "mom", "dad", "brother/sister". Our relationships form and develop based off of these; good and bad. For a child who doesn't know that. A child who has never had those immediate familial memories and ties, what must the world look like to them? Do they even truly understand the meaning of "mom" or what it at least SHOULD mean?
For what it's worth, Macy now knows she has a family. It's crazy for me to even type that. When I put together a package to send to Haiti to be given to her, I had been told I could send a photo book but that it would not be able to be given to her until we had gone through courts. Completely understandable. Imagine my surprise when I opened an email Friday night to find pictures showing that not only had she been given our package, but also the photo book! Tears, fast and furious, as I saw her surrounded by others, and most likely trying to process what exactly "this" was, who were these strange people looking back at her in the pictures of her book, what did "Mom" or "Grandma" even mean? But I know. And I know that she at least can begin to process and understand. And I pray for her heart. I pray for our process. I pray for our family.
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