I remember the first time I attended a summer program. It was junior year of High School, and for the first time, I felt loved. Sure, I felt nostalgia for the people that knew me best. But, to be honest, those people who "knew me best" didn't always love me best--doesn't mean they didn't love me as best they could.
That month in the program, however, made me feel belonging for the first time in my life. I ate with these people, woke up with these people, slept in bunk beds and sleeping bags next to, read and joked with these people. We spent 24 hours a day together and they soon became my family. We experienced life changing moments together-like when we hiked up Giant Mountain in the Adirondacks and I was tired to the point of fatigue, we encouraged each other through.
This experience had taught me that the thing I had longed for all of my life was possible: family. And not just any family, but a family that embraced me, encouraged me and was present on a constant basis.
When the program was over I cried. I cried as I walked to the car, and reluctantly placed my bags in the trunk. I was depressed for weeks, and when I hiked Mount Monadnock a month later with "the people who knew me best" I cried-we bickered all the way up the mountain, and it just wasn't the same.
And I guess living in the commune is kind of like this. I have lived here for a year already and these people have become like my family. But I must admit, there is a level of mistrust here--like I don't actually feel like they can replace the stability that a family provides.
A family is committed to you no matter where in the world you are. Your primary allegiance and devotion is to the people who reared you. When you don't have this, how might this affect how you see yourself?
Whenever I see fathers walking their daughters down the isle, I cry.
I get knots in my throat when I see families-dads and moms and sisters and brothers-going out to dinner together.
I look over attentively when my roommate calls her parent for advise in a desperate situation.
And these tears come from a different place than the ones that come out when I am frustrated with work or with achievement-related things. These tears come from a place of deep fear- that I lay on no real foundation; that family is not something that exists for me, in the typical sense of the word.
Subscribe To
Posts
Comments
2 comments:
Thanks for sharing Annery. I think that the need for family is part of what drives the "living-in-community" movement in Philly. Many people who are drawn into these community are far away from family, or lacked strong family connections to begin with. The catch is that many of these communities (such as the simple way) break apart when people get married and start families of their own.
My dream is of someday having my own family, but having it be a radically inclusive family so that community living is still possible.
Also..as a word of encouragement and further reflection: God adopts us into His family as His children. And yet, while we have a Heavenly father we are created in such a way that we CRAVE and NEED flesh and blood, bone-of-our-bone people around us to be our family too. I truly believe that the CHURCH is meant to function in this way, even though I have never seen it fully manifested. Emmanuel, (the church I'm at now) and the Jubilee house come closer than some churches, but I think what God intends is for us to be in intimate, covenant relationship with our churches and brothers and sisters in Christ in a way that equals and even surpasses that of our biological families.
Post a Comment