Real Families: Meditations on family life

Writing this column over the past five years has brought me repeatedly to themes of fragility and resilience in the lives of real families. To rehearse the stories of families over decades and generations is also to be impressed with the grace in evidence whenever they somehow work. I’m grateful for the mercies, delighted in the surprises, sobered by the failures and grieved with the tragedies.

A father my age was killed this week in our town in what was reportedly a home invasion and robbery. Jim Miller was a scholar of life sciences. He taught biology and prepared many students for careers in medicine and health. He is remembered and appreciated as a tough teacher who cared for his students.

We joined those who mourn, observing solemn silence and lighting candles to hold back the clutch of dark fear. But with the rent in the fabric of one family, the larger family of faith swarmed to form a safety net of prayer, vigilance and comfort.

Families in my faith community spring into full alert when tragedy occurs. They hold life together for us when we’re not sure we can hold it together ourselves. I’ve seen this happen again and again. And while it feels like a miracle of grace—and in many ways it is—such ready care springs from long, sustained attention to love for God and neighbor.

Whether a particular catastrophe is narrow like a knife or broad as a bludgeon, the care that swarms is the gift of a particular community that knows the value of patient faithfulness and small acts of kindness cultivated over years of vigilance.

I’ve been a parent for more than three decades. I am mindful now, more than at the beginning, of the origins and ends of family life. And I’m much more circumspect. My children are grown, each wonderfully contributing to the well-being of their communities with worthy work. Weddings have brought us joy and new daughters to love. Our year-old grandson is ready to make his first solo visit to our home. We have plenty to rejoice in.

Yet the rejoicing is in large part because so many others are also woven into our family story. Folks in Zagreb, Sarajevo, Evanston and Harrisonburg stood like family with us through tough times. Many teachers empowered our children along the way. Our peers and friends served as mentors, spiritual guides and counselors. In the family of faith, others saw potential in our children that escaped us and called out gifts we’d overlooked or undervalued.

We rejoice in our children’s friends and how gifted, loyal and fun they are. We enjoy watching them coach and encourage each other, with empathy and wise counsel. At the close of a recent long wedding evening, I heard one telling another: “Girl, if you didn’t know where the restroom is until now, you’re not drinking enough water.”

I also take great pleasure in being available as the kind of father my adult children still turn to in a crunch. The phone calls now are about where to track down tools or how to interpret an insurance company’s exasperating way of telling you they didn’t quite cover everything you expected them to. Even with the Internet as instant resource for everything from recipes to marriage advice, I am happy to be a father who is occasionally the person of choice to vent with.

I often reflect on what parenting means at this stage. It’s being available by phone for ready counsel. It’s being agile enough to speak of my own experience of workplace struggles in ways that reassure my children they aren’t the first generation to face such tough dilemmas. Sometimes it means making myself more vulnerable, admitting to failures they weren’t aware of at the time. I, too, had to deal with a difficult boss; I made choices that cost me in ways I hadn’t expected; I have regrets about the ways I handled certain conflicts.

There are many makeovers I wish to script if it were possible. My limitations and failures might not have been evident to the children at the time. There were times when our situation was more precarious than children should have to know in the moment. And now they deserve to know that we struggled, too, that finances were a significant concern, that we worried about the strength of our support network and that the choices for service to the church and for advanced education were both costly and rewarding at the same time.

Above all, I want them to know the reality of a faith family network that vibrates with beauty and abundant goodness; a community whose thick fabric of care will be there for them through the best of times and the worst of times. Real families will always need real communities, both to survive and especially to thrive.

Gerald Shenk ponders autumn leaves and family dynamics in Goshen, Ind.