As we create our own families, we're doing just that: creating. We don't have to - and should not - exactly replicate our past experiences with our parents. Certainly if we feel loved by our parents, made secure by them, we want to give that same love and reassurance to our children. If they transmitted their faith in God to us, we desire to transmit that faith to our children. But if our parents have wounded us, we have the power - and responsibility - to break that cycle now. To become free to create a new kind of family, one that gives love and life. One in which people believe not in dominating but in creatively collaborating. But we have to first inwardly examine our parents as human, fallible people, capable of both love and weakness.
In the area of faith, we can see, through prayer, the ways in which our parents lived their faith, and the ways in which they did not. Their imperfection does not invalidate faith in God. Instead, we can grow deeper in appreciation of a God Who loves and aids all of us in our very fallible weaknesses. For God has been faithful to our parents, and is faithful to us.
Only one parent can help us become objective about our parents: our Heavenly Father/Mother. If we go to God our Parent daily in prayer, asking for the gifts of wisdom, understanding, and discernment, to see our parents as He sees them, we will see our parents and be able to accept them, love them more deeply, and/or let go of our anger and forgive them. We will learn to parent as God our Perfect Parent parents us. Above all, we will become capable of emotionally separating ourselves from our parents to become mature, capable, loving individuals in our own right.
The prophet Hosea (Hosea 11) speaks of God's parental love - "When Israel (the chosen people) was a child, I loved him....I took them up in my arms....I led them with cords of compassion, with the bands of love....and I bent down to them and fed them." The psalmist (Psalm 131) speaks of calming and quieting his soul like a child quieted at its mother's breast. God can be both Father and Mother to us, protecting us and nourishing us, whenever we need God. As God is caring for us, God is simultaneously strengthening us to care for our own children.
An important part of our parenting our own children is to consciously decide which of our parents' parenting techniques we will utilize, and which we will avoid. As we discipline our own children, we may smile lovingly and say to ourselves, "That's just what Mom or Dad used to say to me." Or we may flinch and grumble "Oh, no! That's just what Mom or Dad used to say to me, and I SWORE I'd never say that to my children!" It's almost as if our parents inserted a Youtube video of their sayings into our heads, set to run automatically once we became parents. Or it can even be a tone of voice that we're replaying. A gentle tone, that gave us new life. Or a stern, judgmental tone, that devastated us. If the video is positive and loving, replay it with gratitude. If that inner video is destructive, abusive, judgmental, - GET RID OF THAT YOUTUBE VIDEO!
How do we hear God speak to us, or treat us? Jesus tells us that our Father loves us, forgives us, greets us each day with new tender mercies. Are we parenting our children with the loving patience with which God parents us? Or, are we continuing to guide and discipline our children as our parents guided and disciplined us because it's "our family's tradition," without consciously deciding whether that particular tradition helped us or harmed us?
It's important to look at the family structure we grew up in. We may have grown up feeling loved and secure, but our siblings may snap at us "Sure, you feel loved and secure - you were the favorite child." We need to ask ourselves, even if it pains us to admit it, - is that true? Did Mom or Dad play favorites? Some families, from generation to generation, have played favorites, to the extent that it seems normal to each new generation. If this has been true in our family, have we consciously made the decision to avoid playing favorites in our own family? Surely God our heavenly Parent doesn't play favorites with all of us. God loves each of us as if we were the only child of His in the universe.
Other families have, from generation to generation, chosen a particular child, for example the eldest or the youngest, to be in charge of caring for the elderly parents, regardless of which child might be the most temperamentally or financially suited to helping. Do we discuss this with our siblings openly, rather than let situations automatically develop as they always have in the past?
In our relationships with our siblings, do we realize and accept that each of our parents had a different relationship with each of us? Because of those mysterious interactions between personalities, each child in a family has a "different" father and mother. If a parent has been either physically or psychologically abusive, or distant and emotionally unavailable to us, have we decided to creatively "break that mold"? Have we employed prayer, perhaps counseling, to learn how to become emotionally positive and affectionate and involved with our own children? If a parent has favored a sibling over us, have we recognized how we have been emotionally crippled by this, and consciously chosen to believe in how lovable and good that we are? After all, we have a heavenly Father Who has told us, "I will never forget you." If we were the favored one, have we consciously reached out to our siblings with great love to help heal some of those wounds?
Sometimes, as adults, siblings can honestly discuss what it was like growing up in their family, and begin to realize that each one has different memories - of different happy times, different sad times, different stressed times. Sometimes there can even come that graced aha! moment of saying to each other - "Is that what you meant?" or "is that how it happened?" Or "I never realized that." These are truly God Moments - tangible signs that God lives within each of our families as its Fatherly and Motherly nurturing Heart, continually at work to bring us into better communication, deeper union.
When a parent dies, it is important to recognize that each sibling will grieve differently - because each sibling had a different relationship with his/her parent. If a sibling - or we - had a poor relationship with a mother or father, we or he/she may seem not to be grieving at all. But that is because a "complicated grief" is going on - a quiet, often subtle, inner weeping for a relationship that never existed, or wasn't as life-giving as it could have been. In truth, this often unacknowledged "non-grieving" is the most painful grieving of all. Be patient and understanding with yourself or your sibling. Be honest enough to admit that your parent wasn't perfect, you aren't perfect, your sibling isn't perfect - but you're all loved by God. God is the great Love Who connects and supports all of you, and asks you to understand and support each other.
When we are finally mature enough to admit to ourselves (and even to others) that we didn't come from a perfect family, we can say to ourselves in triumph "Huh! I've finally admitted that I'm a normal human being!" Because that's what it amounts to: we're all broken, wounded people, as our parents and siblings were and are. That's where forgiveness comes in. If no one is perfect, we're all in need of saying "I'm sorry" and "I forgive you." If we all fumble the ball, make mistakes, we can all learn from each other, even kibitzing over cups of coffee after the kids have gone to bed. Admitting our brokenness to ourselves and each other builds the best bridge for repairing and re-strengthening family relationships.
Have you ever thought about the beautiful truth that GOD IS A FAMILY? Saint John Paul II said,
"Our God in his deepest mystery is not solitude, but a family, for he has within himself fatherhood, sonship, and the essence of the family, which is love. That love, in the divine family, is the Holy Spirit."
Pope Francis continues this thought, and says "The family is thus not unrelated to God's very being..." God desires that every family, whatever its structure, should become "a communion of persons in the image of the union of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Begetting and raising children, for its part, mirrors God's creative work."
Our families are called to mirror God's creative work! That seems like a mighty tall, even impossible, order! But God not only believes that every family is a unique image of the Holy Trinity, doing God's creative work, - God keeps His end of the bargain to make that wonderful promise a reality for us. God is daily involved in helping all of us grow into the family God knows that we can become - both the family we came from, and the family that we are now creating. God, the family in each of our souls, constantly is keeping our families growing in the joyful, unselfish, life-giving love that is the life of the Trinity.
But - God KNOWS we're not perfect! God KNOWS that we all go on routine pity parties, that we squabble and rub each other the wrong way, that we pray one minute, then "fall off the wagon" the next and do something, small, petty, and selfish. That's all right - as long as we spiritually and psychically come around to admitting what's wrong, stand up, and try again. Because - the welfare of the family - your beautiful family, - is decisive for the future of the world.
Every time you give a kiss instead of withholding it - you're growing family.
Every time you say "I'm sorry" and dissolve into someone's arms, you're growing family.
Every time you wipe the tears away and decide to listen again, you're growing family.
God is with you and your beloved family, every day, every way. Believe it!