Navigating Family

I like analogies, because they help me understand things.  Sometimes when I can't understand a situation in my regular, old, everyday life, and my brain can't process what is happening, I try and think of an analogy, and crazily enough, it helps me see reality a bit clearer.

Imagine you are an explorer around the time of Columbus, give or take one hundred years.  You are sailing on the open seas, wondering if the earth is round.  Along the way, you run into unexplored land masses, and on those land masses or islands are different kinds of people.  People who don't look like you, don't speak like you, and don't act like you.  I suspect that the initial reaction by the explorers was one of fear and suspicion of these new people.  Even if you settled down and stayed awhile, there would always be tension because you come from two totally different cultures.

From the opposite point of view, imagine that you are one of the inhabitants of those islands, and you decide to leave with those explorers.  You return to their native land (possibly Spain, or England), and you learn of their ways.  When you return to your island, you are no longer the same person.  Your life has been changed and enriched because of your exposure to a new land with different people.  As much as you would like to return to how life was before, it never will be.

Enough with analogies.  Let's talk family.

I have met a handful of people in my lifetime (I can only think of two individuals) who love their extended family.  They look forward to returning to see their families and can say that there is nowhere else they would rather be.  They actually look to their parents and siblings as perfect examples of what they want to be.  These people are some the most emotionally healthy people I know.

Most of my friends though come from dysfunctional families.  Maybe not even dysfunctional--just not perfect.  Of course this describes most people because let's face it--most of us aren't perfect!

When John and I got married, it was like two completely different cultures coming together.  I personally had a lot of suspicion of his very large, very loud family, and I have no doubt that he had a hard time understanding my almost non-existent one.

We moved away, started our own family and started our own culture.  When we returned to see our families, we just weren't the same anymore.  We had our own ideas of how to do things and how we liked things done.  For example, we like to eat out.  A lot.  Enough said.

This past weekend, John has been in Utah for the swearing-in of his brother, Mike, to the Utah House of Representatives.  A lot of his family is there, including his parents, one of his brothers, two sisters-in-law and a whole lot of kids.  While there has been a lot of fun and good food, there has been a lot of tension too.  It was my idea that John go out there to support Mike, but I have felt guilty ever since John set foot in Zion (and possibly before).  Although John would never speak ill of his family, I can hear in his voice that it has been stressful for him.  All of his siblings are married now and have their own families/cultures.  They each have their own ideas of how to do things, and they aren't the same ways that their parents did things.  Too, there is a lot of resentment about their childhood, resentment which is shelved on a normal, daily basis.  However, return to a situation with parents in the picture and those feelings are laying on the counter for everyone to see.  A sister-in-law's tender feelings have been hurt by a parent (and she retaliated), and another sister-in-law could only tell me that she's been in the exact same position before and been hurt in the exact same way by the same parent.

I wish I knew how to solve this problem.  I'm not any good at working with my extended family.  I always worry that they don't love me, and that I would just be a nuisance to them if we had any contact.  While I arm myself with preparations of deep breathing and patience when I know I'm walking into a heated environment, I much prefer to avoid any contact at all.  When I AM with them, I mostly just shut down to protect myself from being hurt.

John does the opposite (being from another land and culture) :-)  John wants everyone to get along...and he wants everyone to be like us.  I know that sounds funny, or arrogant, but it's not meant as either--it's meant honestly.  We have such a happy family with our children, and he wants everyone else to feel that same way.  You can imagine how the natives feel, seeing the explorer arrive, and trying to change how things are done.

Unfortunately, my children take after me.  They would much rather avoid the situation than try.  I guess you could say we don't like confrontation.  The downside to this is that we miss opportunities to form relationships because we are scared.  John takes a risk in offending someone, but usually he comes out the winner, making life-long friends.  Have you seen the contact list on his cell phone?

I think there's really only one thing to do.  We should look at what we don't like from our island, be it the coconuts, or some of the hurtful personality traits, and change.  We need to move away, break the cycle of what isn't healthy and create something that is good.  When we go back, it's important to respect what is there, and recognize that it's where we got our beginnings.  Good or bad, that land helped shaped us and gave us the strength to make the new family we have now.

I wish I could wave my wand and make things right.  Since I can't, I'm happy to sit on my couch in the house that John and I built, be thankful that I'm not in Utah at the moment, and be thankful for what we have created together.  I can only pray that my children will be grateful for it too.