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I was gone this weekend for my Christian Education Lay Academy class. The topic this weekend was faith formation in the home. That’s not what I’m going to write about, but rather the topic that started our class that I struggled with myself.
Define Family.
Should be a fairly simple statement, right? No, not really for our families. I never came up with anything that I was completely happy with, but here are some of the things that were thrown out there.
Persons bound together by blood ties or mutual commitments that are sustained by shared memory and common hope.
From the Plan of work for the Educational Mission of the United Church of Christ pg. 18
Sorry, that one doesn’t work for me. First there is the whole mutual commitments part. Many of our foster kids don’t really want to be in the placement they are in. They’d rather be with their birth parents, their siblings if they’re separated, or with another biological family member. There isn’t a mutual commitment. They’re in your home because they were told they have to be.
Then there’s the part about common hope. My hope for Sammy and Sammy’s hope for himself don’t even come close to each other. My hope for Sammy would be graduating high school with no further law violations, without having to live in a residential treatment center, foster home or other facility or residence that is not our home. I would hope that he’d go on to college and live out his potential and have the successful life that I know he could have. His hope is just to get from one day to the next.
The second definition was:
A set of relationships that endure over a lifetime despite life’s separation and attempts to meet the needs for belonging and attachment and to share life’s purposes, help, and resources.
From the Consultation on Family Ministry page 10
Sorry, that one isn’t working for me either. Let’s start with relationships that endure over a lifetime. That presumes a “normal” functioning family. My own biological family has point blank told me that I am not welcome because they disagree with my methods of parenting my kids. Our kids are very similar. They may or may not have any relationship with their birth family because of termination of parental rights or separation by foster care. That does not mean these people are not part of their family.
Then there’s the “attempts to meet the needs for belonging and attachment.” Oh, I know many families who would be to differ on this, and I would have to agree. My attempts to attach with Sammy do not make him view me as his family, nor does he necessarily feel like he “belongs” to us.
How about the share life’s purposes, help and resources part? Some of our kids do not care to share one bit of anything we have to offer them, much less our help.
As a class we attempted to define family. I did not agree with most of the answers thrown out because they sure don’t fit our family.
• A group of people who live together – Sammy doesn’t even live with us, much less the other people who comprise our family.
• When you go to them, the people who have to take you in – Oh, don’t even get me started on that.
• People that know your insides regardless of what your outsides look like – Again, this doesn’t fit with most of our families because the feelings our kids have are so complex that we struggle to understand them.
• Where you feel loved and accepted unconditionally – This certainly doesn’t fit the majority of our kids with their birth families.
• Two or more people who are together because of birth, adoption or marriage – This might be the most generic definition that could fit our families.
One of the people in back of the class had a very “on point” statement that mirrored my thoughts on this issue. She said “All of this describes an average family but doesn’t work for a dysfunctional family.” I muttered a quiet “AMEN!”
This whole session got me to wondering how Sammy would define family. I don’t think it would fit into any of the definitions I’ve listed.
Our own family has very little in the way of blood connection. My blood family is not a part of my life. Sammy is part of our family, but does not live in our home (coincidentally, he called while I was writing this), our family extends to my kids’ birth siblings and the families they are living with right now. Not to mention the two children that we used to have living in our home that are now somewhere else. We still consider them part of our family. How does that fit into any of these definitions?
One of the great things about this class, is that it got people to consider adoption as an option of forming a family, even if they don’t know of anyone with adoption experience. One of the books we had to read, “Making a Home for Faith” by Elizabeth Caldwell mentioned adoption so often that I had to e-mail the author and ask her what her adoption experience was. She has none, aside from friends or church members who have adopted, but she felt strongly that adoption be included.
I thanked her for her inclusion and I hope that a seed has been planted in one person’s mind. A child may end up finding a home because of this class.
