One of the sore spots (obviously) in my life is family. I have many, many relatives - aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents. When I was younger, we would all spend time together visiting, celebrating birthdays or holidays. But then couples started getting divorced and families started splitting up. My parents started to isolate our immediate family from the chaos by opting out of extended family events and pretty soon, even our intimate family unit started to crumble.
So when I first met my husband, I was drawn into his family. They celebrated holidays, they stopped by each other's homes to visit, they called to "check-in." They were thoughtful, caring, loving, open, vulnerable, humorous and just plain real. I clung to that family as mine started to fall apart.
Now as my family is trying to heal from the past, my mom is encouraging me to reach out to my relatives once again. I was set-aback at first, considering her and my father were the ones who initiated the distance between these relatives so many years ago. Through that time, I had developed a poor attitude, "Those relatives don't care about me. If they had, they would write/call/visit." But I recently came to the realization, "What if they were thinking the same thing about me?"
As I live this year on purpose, one of my goals is to reach out to my relatives on birthdays and anniversaries -- to not be afraid of how they will react or how we will relate after all this time.
After all, Pastor Rick Warren said, "Our objective is to serve others in love without distractions, being all there, focused on them. Sometimes we serve others simply through our presence."
That's what I want to do.
That's what I want to do.
No comments:
Post a Comment