The Ties that Bind

I stare at the book pages that my brother Logan and I pasted on my wall with Elmer's glue one stormy night during my Junior year of high school. I look to the center of the room and spy the sticker wall that my brother Mitch and I started when I was seven and he was two. The blue floor sports cough syrup that my mom spilled when I was sick, remnants of pick paint from when I decided to mural my right wall, Bon-Bon nail polish in various colors, and stains from dad eating food in the room late at night before we headed off to movie adventures. My room reminds me of the family and memories that I have often forgotten, shoved aside to make room for the "self discovery" that I hold so dear.

Over the past few days, I have come to understand that though my family is indeed imperfect, it is also amazing. These past two years of college, though full of breaks shared with my family and games of phone tag with my mom, have not been years filled with appreciation for what I have here in Lexington. The first two years of college were mostly spent trying to distance myself from my family, attempting to understand the imperfections in my God-given unit, and discovering who I was without the members of my immediate support system.

But the thing is, I can not distance myself from this family. My mom pursues me, loves me and understands more than any person in existence. My brothers tare at my heart strings when I am away. I grieve not hearing Mitch's voice change day by day and only hearing the final man-voice that now greets me in the afternoons when he finally decides to wake up. I hate that I have not been with Colton during his therapies, and I can not stand the fact that my dad has not been forced to go a chick flick since Christmas. Families were not originally crafted for distance. Families are the first things that love us for exactly who we are (or at least try to); they are suppose to be our support, and we are to lean on them rather than attempt to go it alone.

(My brothers and I at Myrtle Beach)

I also know that though it is good to understand the imperfections in my family, it is also a glorious thing to revel in the good things about it. This world is not only fallen; it is also in the age of redemption as we speak. My family, in some small ways, is being redeemed. I need to see the beautiful, healthy features of this family too. It was not good to walk around in the rose-colored glasses that I wore before college which showed me only the good things about my parents and brothers. However, now that I see the good and the bad, it is time to create a picture that includes the family that I have, at times (even if only subconsciously), excluded in order to make sense of my life.

There is also a problem with discovering who one is outside of the context of the family. It is impossible. Our families shape us. They plant pieces of wisdom in our minds, share experiences with us, create terrible tendencies within us, turn us off or on to various habits (good and bad), conform us as well as create a desire for nonconformity within us, and love and hate us with such a passion that they're spirits leave fingerprints on our hearts. For some, families are dreadful things. Parents, for others, are simply DNA givers. But, for most of us, families are both beautiful and broken, dreadful and dynamic, the things that make us cringe and make us cling. For most of us, parents give way more than DNA.

Though I have made my family a partial part of my life for the past two years, I have decided that it is high time I drop the control and embrace the ugly and lovely family that I have whole heartedly. Self discovery is not about deciding who you are outside of others. It's about understanding that the self is rooted in Christ. I am defined by whose I am, and I belong to God. It is impossible to understand the self without understanding the connections that have shaped you. God has shaped me. My family has shaped me. My friends have shaped me. People shape me everyday, and excluding them from the word picture, does not solve the problem. My life is a scrabble board and without the family that has invested so much in me, almost all of the letters are vowels. There is no life, no fervor, no concreteness without the mother, father, teenager, pre-teen, and child that I call my family unit.

My mommy and me!

Dad and I during Father-Daugter Date Night.