Family is messy.
When I sat down to write today, it was the only word that summed up my thoughts.
Messy.
Not neat, not organized, not clear (in communication, status, or even demonstrating love), not outlined in purpose (as I struggle daily to figure out how extended family fits in God’s plan)…it’s just messy.
No two family members even feel the same about maintaining relationships. One brother has never really wanted anything to do with me, and his own pleasure-seeking was always more important than maintaining family relationships. The other is hot and cold, sometimes he seems to try, and at other times is completely disconnected (like when I divorced and could’ve used the support, but I didn’t get even a single dinner invite).
People are generally selfish. I know this. Selfish with their time, their gifts, their blessings…God says so.
But I have always struggled to understand why I matter so little to the people most closely related to me. I tried for decades to maintain close relationships, but in the end, I just felt used and discarded. I felt like an obligation, not a joy. I felt like a box to check, not a relationship to maintain.
For the most part, I have let the idea go that extended family is meant to be close. That’s not to say I haven’t worked hard to teach my children to value each other, to maintain relationships with each other, and to really have servant hearts for each other, but I am wondering if I’m just delusional that some families truly do have close relationships and not hollow joyless obligations.
My mom never tried mending our relationship. She constantly gave me excuses why it was okay to enable my daughter to not take responsibility for her own actions, even as her life demonstrated even more lack of accountability. She constantly undermined my parenting, and even when I pointed out the steps she and my dad took to save my brothers from their own self-destruction as young adults (you could call it “tough love”), and that they were healthy adults now because of it, she would just excuse her actions as loving…even though they were the complete opposite of what she did to help my brothers succeed.
She died, and I was still resentful for her actions. She was never sorry. Everything was about her own comfort no matter who it hurt…leaving my entire junior year of high school many states away to take care of her parents, functionally gone my senior year because she took 21 credit hours and had no time for family, her depression when I was a kid that left me feeling totally alone while my dad told me I couldn’t even talk to her because she was “sleeping,” the shared house at a time I was so vulnerable in an abusive marriage, the constant emotional manipulation because she was always a victim of something…
When she died, I was sad for both of us. For the last 5 years, we barely had a relationship. I was so tired of begging both of my parents to stop trying to parent (enable) my oldest and let me parent, and they just never believed I was capable, even though their own meddling has improved nothing in her life. She was never allowed to struggle because they fixed everything for her. Even though she has lived with her bio dad for 3 1/2 years, they provide her a car (and her dad has two cars of his own that he doesn’t even use) and a phone.
When my daughter quit her job of just several months to go on a vacation (because they wouldn’t give her the time off after just a few months of working there), my parents (and her bio dad) supported it, even applauded it as some adult choice. I’m rather certain my parents even gave her more money for her trip to FL.
She hasn’t kept a job longer than 4-5 months in the last 3 years. She quits any time something gets hard. My parents enabled it over and over, telling me I’m too hard on her expecting her to follow through on commitments.
It’s messy. My daughter made her own choices, I cannot fault my parents for her choices, but they did contribute heavily to her mindset.
I know life is messy. I know we aren’t capable of Jesus’ perfect love. I am certainly not capable. But I do wish for more than I have had with my brothers, with my parents, and with my daughter. I’ve given up on the anger, it serves nothing, but I am sad.
Cleaning out some memorabilia yesterday, I came across a Christmas card from my parents a couple years ago about how they are proud of me, then a note “we mean every word.” It’s hard to internalize that when their actions don’t reflect their words .