Oh, fffff... amily

If I typed the title of this post correctly, you read it as if you were about to pronounce a cuss word... but you ended up saying a safe word instead. Rather, you ended it with a word that's supposed to be safe ("family"). Reader, I hope I didn't disrespect you or offend you too badly; I was mainly just going for punk-blogger shock value. [Insert really loud electric guitar here.] If you've followed my blog for a while, perhaps you understand that as God has been emotionally healing me, I've realized how deeply I've had issues with the concept of "family" and that God has been healing those issues with Himself.

I've heard a couple of preachers mention that God basically created and redeemed humankind because He wanted a family. And those preachers are right. Why else would God let us call Him "Father," especially after He adopts us as children?

"The Lord builds up Jerusalem; He gathers together the outcasts of Israel. He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds." (Psalm 147:2-3)

The word "family" is supposed to bring very safe images to mind, and it's probably supposed to even bless you with very warm fuzzies. As I learned in school, the family unit is one of the most basic social foundations of society. When you're born, you're supposed to learn how to interact with the rest of the world by interacting with your family first.

Which is one reason why being born into a dysfunctional family is a problem. I didn't see the problems in my immediate family until after I went off to college and noticed how my classmates interacted with their families. In hindsight, I realize that going back home during summers and holidays was such a heavy thing because I would be away from my friends and my favorite activities and also because I would be flying back into an abusive environment. As I told a counselor a couple of years after I graduated from college, I felt trapped.

So, let's examine the concept of "family" that I had before I disowned myself. Here's what my immediate family looked like:

My father was an intellectual snob who completely lacked common sense and depended on his wife for everything. An emotional basketcase, he was quite effeminate, and he insisted on constantly being the center of attention. He would cry at the drop of a hat. He was hypercritical and overtly manipulative. If you asked him a question, and he thought the answer was supposed to be common knowledge, his eyes would widen and he would tell you the answer in an extremely condescending tone of voice that communicated, "I can't believe you're that big of an idiot" without actually saying so. However, his vast array of talents always kept him on a pedestal, so he sailed through life being accepted in various circles. An egomaniac, he would often turn a conversation with you into a monologue about himself. His lectures would last around 30 or 45 minutes at a time, and after he would leave the room, if he would remember to tell you something else, he would come back to where you were and give you an addendum to his monologue that would probably suck another 20 minutes or so out of you. An extremely narrow-minded Pharisee, he would spiritually abuse me this way after I got baptized in the Holy Spirit.

My mother was a social snob who was more than likely gifted in hospitality but did not like people at all. An emotional macho stoic, she didn't display emotions at all unless they were laughter or anger. I think I only saw her cry about 3 or 4 times until I was about 35 years old. She was hypercritical, even though she wouldn't always vocalize her criticisms to a person's face, and she was subtly controlling. She would always talk badly about people behind their backs but smile and be very nice to them to their face. We would bond on Saturday nights by doing our nails and gossiping about other people, especially church people. Most of the time, she insisted on doing all the housework herself, so most of my memories of her are when she was doing the dishes, cooking, or doing laundry. And then she would complain about being overworked. She would constantly have a TV on in the background, and she became more familiar with the lives of TV anchors and actors than she was of my life; she understood the plots of made-for-TV movies more than she understood the happenings of my life. An extremely narrow-minded Pharisee who I honestly don't think is saved, she totally backed up my father's spiritual abuse of me. When I told her about borderline sexual abuse that was happening to me at church, she didn't do anything to stop it.

My sister was a hyper-psycho nutjob who once chased me around the house with a plastic bat. Another time, she found where I had hid my amateur graphic-novelesque drawings, and she laughed at them. She would make fun of everything. An interesting combination of both my father and my mother, she was the favored one. A loud screamer, she always demanded to be the center of attention. She eventually ended up spiritually abusing me, too. As someone who really likes animals, I shudder to think about the state of her current pets. She and her husband used to throw their dogs at each other to provoke them to fight each other, and they thought these violent canine scenes were funny. When she was younger, she used to put her pet parakeet's head inside her mouth, and then when the screaming bird would defend itself by biting her, she would punish it by hitting its head. I think she's currently on medication.

And I, of course, was the little bleephole who was sometimes the academic golden girl, sometimes the invalid, sometimes the little turd who would only pretend to be sick so that she wouldn't have to go to school, sometimes the disturbed child who would pick the wires out of her braces or pour hydrogen peroxide on her perfectly normal fingers, usually petrified with fear, usually looking for some sort of escape. Perhaps you've read about my suicide attempt and/or my addictive personality.

Wait. Maybe I'm addicted to blogging now. Oy vey! Heh. Nah, I just thought it was time for some comic relief.

So, after I finally listened to God and let Him pluck me out of my family, He started to do some major rewiring with my concept of family. Safe images? Warm fuzzies? Nope. More like fodder for therapy. Unabashed retching.

Now I'll veer off the subject for a bit. I haven't had a date in almost 21 years, but I once came very close to a guy actually returning my feelings for him. I met a guy at a church Sunday School class about 7 years ago. He was a cute guy who mostly kept to himself, but he let me have a little bit of conversation with him. One time after class was over, an older lady came over to us while we were talking and glared at me. I found out later that she was his mother. I learned that he would come to the Sunday School class but wouldn't really stick around for the worship service (red flag #1). I think he would usually drop off his mom's car and leave.

One Sunday when our teachers had the entire class at their house for lunch, the guy stuck around, and I noticed that I was very attracted to him. So, I got very excited when he walked over to me after one of his smoke breaks (red flag #2), gave me his phone number (red flag #3), and asked me to call him (red flag #4). I ended up giving him my phone number, too, along with my email address and an explanation that I don't like to talk on the phone.

So, I eventually called him (good grief, Tirzah, don't do that; you're a woman who is worth being pursued!). I was still crushing on him pretty hard until he told me some stuff about himself. He had been involved in the occult, and the lifestyle still had a rather strong hold on him. He was sort of indecisive about whether or not he should go back to the occult or pursue Christianity.

So, I counseled him as best I could (sorry, but that's red flag #5; a guy needs male counselors). He and I had a very interesting conversation about relating to God. He was like, "I don't spend very much time thinking about God; I need to think about Him more; I need to focus on Him more." I was like, "I can relate to that." I tried to explain to him that that was a very religious way of thinking. (I'll talk more about that later.) His grand conclusion to his religion dilemma was, "I just need to get slain in the Spirit."

So, about an hour later, at the end of our conversation, I definitely didn't like him anymore. By the time he got up the nerve to say, "You're witty and interesting, and I find you attractive," I simply said, "Thank you." (That was my way of rejecting him as politely as I could.) He was like, "I get to talk to somebody like you about every 5 years."

I never talked to him again. I think I saw him dodging the worship services to drop off his mom's car at church a couple of times, and that was it. So, I almost got involved with an otherwise nice guy who may or may not have still been involved in the occult. Glad I dodged that bullet!

Now I'll veer back onto the subject.

For the past 2 years, I've done laundry at what I've referred to as my beautiful coin laundromat (especially in this post). It's not a place for germophobes, but it gets me out of my apartment once a week, it keeps dryer lint out of my kitchen, and it keeps me on my toes. I've learned a LOT at my beautiful coin laundromat. More than anything, I've discovered that visiting the laundromat is a family event. So, I've gotten to observe a LOT of families interact with one another. It ain't always pretty.

I'm not a trained professional, but sometimes at the beautiful coin laundromat, I see what I interpret as evidence of abuse. One time, a man was verbally blasting a woman (I'm assuming they were husband and wife?) and insulting her and making her feel inferior. She was defending herself, but the conversation ended with her crying. Sometimes other people will just talk to their children too harshly. Other times, they will ignore the posted signs (the ones that say, "Please do not let your children play in the laundry baskets") and let their kids play in the laundry baskets (which is one of the reasons why I don't put my clean laundry in the baskets). One time, I saw a lady cheerfully ignoring her child who was crying very loudly about something. Another time, I saw a man sit his little children on a folding table and yell at them to tell them to look straight ahead. They did. They looked scared. He wasn't gentle with them. If he treats them that way in public, I shudder to think how he treats them in private. Of course, these are all just my biased observations.

And sometimes, I just hear arguing and bickering. If it were me, I would find it awkward to air out my family's metaphorical dirty laundry in a literal laundromat, but whatevs.

Most of the time, I just notice people minding their own business in sharing the tasks of loading and folding their laundry within their families. Wow. Having the ability to do laundry before you hit puberty? What's that like? This concept fascinates me.

And one time, I observed an otherwise scary-looking, large, tattooed man giving his family a group hug in front of the dryers. I don't know if maybe he had been away for a while, or if perhaps someone in his family was about to go off on vacation or something like that, but there were definitely warm fuzzies. I don't think anyone was crying but me, but it was still a tender moment.

At the beautiful coin laundromat, I get to see a snapshot of family interaction in everyday life.

So, regarding my religiously aware occult-hopping friend, I understood what he was talking about when he said he had trouble thinking about God all the time. Yes, the Bible says to meditate on whatever is true, holy, pure, right, etc (Philippians 4). And it says to meditate on God's word day and night (Psalm 1). But I think demanding that your mind think about God nonstop is putting a very unrealistic expectation on yourself. It's basically inventing another religious rule in classic Pharisee-like fashion. I mean, if you were to make something like "Thou shalt never stop thinking about God" the 28th chapter of Leviticus or the 11th commandment, then anytime you'd think about something besides God, you'd be sinning, right? At least, that's my opinion.

At my workplace, there's this ridiculously unpredictable combination of soul-crushing micromanagement and head-scratching delegation. God has shown me that the only place where there will be a perfect balance of micromanagement and delegation is with Him. Yes, sometimes God gives extremely specific instructions and watches you complete a task. And yes, other times God assigns a task to you and trusts you to complete it.

I think it would be very awkward if all the kids at the beautiful coin laundromat were constantly preoccupied with thinking about their parents. Oh, I love my dad, I love my mom, I love my dad, I love my mom... Hey, son, why are you pouring Tide all over the floor? Oh, sorry, I was too busy trying to think about you. Hey, son, I'm flattered, but I gave you a brain for a reason. Pay attention. We can do something fun later, but for now it's time to work.

A weird idol that you burn incense to and check out into a trance with? Nope, that's not God. And that's not a family.

An abusive bully who hunts you down and demands to know why you didn't meet his unreasonable standards of perfection that he didn't bother to tell you about beforehand, and that he doesn't intend to meet himself? Nope, that's not God. And that's not a healthy family.

A safe place to run to and enjoy when things are rough, when things are fine, or when things are confusing? a place where you can always be yourself and not be judged for it? Yep, that's God. And that's a healthy family.

An accepting Being who works with you and helps you achieve certain tasks that need to be achieved? Somebody who is always available to answer your questions and guide you anyplace that you need to go? Yep, that's God. And that's definitely a healthy family.

A Friend who hangs out with you on the way back from the beautiful coin laundromat, and when you're listening to Billy Joel in your car, you get a picture of Him dancing the running man, and it makes you smile? Yes, of course that's God. Believe it or not, He's definitely my Family.

Oy vey! He always knows when it's time for some comic relief.