Humbug

The holidays are upon us. You know what that means - cookies, weight gain, lights, and the monstrous cancer of unresolved family drama bubbling back up to the surface of our repressed, oh-so-very repressed, psyches.

Fa la la la... ah, whatever.

I was reading this article about Andy Stanley and his father, Charles Stanley. I had no idea who these people were before reading the article, but apparently they are Southern Baptist giants of one kind or another. Basically, the father was a big Baptist preacher, and his son looked like he was going to follow in his footsteps. After a divorce that caused an earthquake of controversy in their church, the father felt like his son was not being supportive of him, so the father responded by being combative in a passive-aggressive, work-his-personal-problems-into-his-sermons kind of way. The son wound up leaving the church and starting his own, and their relationship was wounded for years.

It saddened me that, first, they were both so childish. Neither of them would talk to the other and explain himself. It was also sad that this had to be performed in such a public way, with the whole church looking on.

I was impressed that, later in the article, the father and son began to meet each other for meals. They were both extremely uncomfortable (the article calls the meetings 'excruciating'), but they kept meeting for them anyway and forcing themselves to talk to one another. They did this regularly, almost religiously, until they began to have a relationship again and find the love they used to have for one another.

Family drama, especially from the outside, looks petty and unnecessary, but from the inside, it's incredibly real, painful, and cosmic in its significance. No one can hurt you like your family. No one knows all your tender places, all your weakest points, like the people whom you have grown up with or lived with. From the outside, people think, 'Oh my gosh, just talk to one another,' or, 'Um... you guys are saying, like, the same thing,' or, 'Does that really matter that much to you?'

People are walking away from their marriages, from their siblings, from their children, and from their parents, and ripping holes in themselves that are so very, very hard to mend.

I guess that, in all this diatribe, I'm trying to say, 'Talk to your family members. Get in the habit of good communication. Then, the holidays won't be so awful, because you have good habits. Call your parents. Call your brother or sister or son or daughter or aunt or cousin or spouse or meet them for an excruciating meal and just talk*. Take the high road. Listen to each other. Forgive each other. Go to therapy, if you have to. This is not how you want to live your life. The weight of this will sink your heart, and the holidays will remain dark, dark times, growing darker every year until that year when, finally, someone has died and you can't fix it anymore.'

I pray everyday that we protect this little unit with unbridled aggression

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*Disclaimer: if you are a victim of violent abuse, please don't contact whoever that is. You should probably be in a controlled environment, like a therapy session, before you ever get in contact with that person directly. I'm talking about relational issues, not violent crimes. I have many friends for whom this is the case, and I don't want my statements to be misleading or dangerous for them (hahaha, I flatter myself that anyone takes my advice... but seriously, don't do anything dangerous).