"From the Heart" October 2010
Every time I preach on the challenges a family faces when there is a chronic illness, there is always at least one person in the congregation who comes up to me after the service and says, “Thank you.”
“Thank you for saying the words out loud. Thank you for sharing with all of us the pain some of us feel.”
Too often, we think our family is alone in our challenges, yet all we have to do is look at the families of the Bible to know how challenging life is, has always been, and will be for our human families. Everyone healed by Jesus came from a family. And the Old Testament those families were tested more than we could ever know. Noah and the Ark is much more than a cosmic story of epic proportions; it is a story which literally represents all the wreckage any family could face.
It is difficult to admit, even to ourselves, how devastating chronic illness is to our “perfect families.” Yes, it is hard to admit that there is something “wrong.” Consider Job’s experience with “the devil.” When I was young, I thought everyone else’s family was perfect, and mine was the only family ever, in the world, that needed fixin’.
It wasn’t until twenty years after high school, when I ran into one of my best friends of those high school years that I started to realize how many families have difficult issues. Sometime over the two hours that my best friend and I spent catching up at an airport, she said, “Lillie, you know my choir director father used to beat us every Sunday night. Yes, beat us. I was so glad when I went away to college.”
And, I thought my family needed work! My father was an alcoholic, who insisted he wasn’t. He’d say, “I’m not a drunk, Lillie. I know alcoholics, people who drink all the time, why they’re some of my friends, but I’m not one of them!” (What does that tell you?) Yes, he liked to drink and fall asleep, but he never beat us, and he taught us some wonderful life lessons. I now know that I was luckier than many.
There are all kinds of challenges a family can face: chronic illness, alcoholism, drug addiction, terminal illness, or some other kind of mental illness. Illness does not make us dysfunctional; how we react to the illness demonstrates how healthy or unhealthy the family.
I always say, a family is as functional or as dysfunctional as the next family! There is no perfect family; we are all real human beings who face varying degrees of challenges with varying degrees of capabilities. As Leo Tolstoy wrote in his wonderful but sad novel, “Anna Karenina”, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family in unhappy is its own way.”
Whatever makes us who we are—functional or dysfunctional—or some of both—as adults we learn pretty quickly from the real world that there is no time for feeling sorry for ourselves. We have to go on with what we’ve got, heal a little along the way, work hard, heal some more, and succeed despite our vulnerabilities. We have to be. We have to be whoever we are, and try to be a little better each day.
Being is a life’s work. We never become perfect; it’s the world, not Heaven!
So when I preach sometimes about the challenges of facing a chronic illness in the family, remember, we are all in the same ark. The flood happens to us at different times and in different ways. We need to reach out to those who can help us – our friends, our families, and our faith in God. And with the benefit of that support, we need to reach deep within ourselves, and face the challenges that life gives us.
See you in church, Pastor Lillie
Posted by UNMC Office at October 23, 2010 08:55 AM