Changing Dynamics

 I wanted to share some thoughts about something today that is on my mind, as it has been a bit of a recurring thought for me recently.   If anyone knows family dynamics, there is something about them which defines what a cohesive family is, and that is something I wanted to touch on now.  The common misconception is that family is just DNA or blood, but that may not be the case, and I wanted to get into that now. 

I come from a fairly large extended family, although my immediate family is small and I am technically the only surviving member of that - I currently have no direct ancestors that are living, and the reality of that sunk into me over the past few years.  As far as extended family though, I have a huge number of cousins, many of which live within a short distance of me.  However, I never see them, they don't really talk to me, and I might as well not exist to them in all honesty.  This is why I say that DNA  and blood can define biological family, but not necessarily true family.  You need something more for that, and I wanted to touch on that now. 

Barbara is my ex-wife, yet we are still amazingly close and are there for each other.  Will we ever be romantically linked again?  At this point I doubt that, but we are by any definition family.  This new dimension of family I have entered into starts with her, but there are some others who I will bring into it later as they are the foundation of a new chapter of life for me personally, but also for Barbara.  If I were to describe my life with Barbara now, she is like a sister to me - we love each other still like brother and sister, and we do look out for and care for each other.  It sort of invalidates a common assumption that ex-spouses must hate each other - I think that fallacy has poisoned society, and it causes a lot of unnecessary tension that doesn't need to be necessary.  Barbara and I both know that something happened in our 27 years of marriage where we didn't really have that intimate bond a husband and wife should have - we were both victims of circumstance, and from the earliest days of our marriage interference from outsiders who had no business in our lives created a situation where we never fully connected in the way a husband and wife should.  But, before we even dated, Barbara and I were friends, a friendship that will soon encompass 40 years.  I want to talk about a little bit of that story now, as it has a big role to play in the current family dynamic I wanted to talk about.

I first met Barbara in early 1990 - I was in my second semester at what is now the Baptist University of Florida (then it was called Florida Baptist Theological College) in the small peanut-farming town of Graceville in the Florida Panhandle.  Being that our school was a Christian college, we had segregated dorms, with the girls housed on one end of campus and the two men's dorms in the middle of the campus then.  The girls' dorms looked like military barracks, and they were shared with a few married couples' housing units.  Barbara, who had arrived on campus in 1984, approximately 5 years before I did, was housed in one of those units with two other girls who had started when I did - they were both local girls named Daphne and Rachel.  I actually kind of liked Rachel then, and we even had a sort of informal date one night with Daphne and her then-boyfriend Rob, as we were all new students at the time and had a sort of bond between all of us.  Rachel was a sweet local girl, and she was beautiful in a sort of modest way that made her endearing.  After a couple of months, I finally got the nerve to ask her out officially, and went to where her dorm was on the other end of the campus.  Back then, if you visited the girls' dorms (and vice versa), your conversation was limited to the front step.  I had this whole spiel planned to ask Rachel to be my girlfriend then, and when I got to her door, I knocked on it.  The person who answered was a slightly chubby girl with Coke-bottle glasses and her hair in curlers from a recent shower, and she was chowing down on pickled herring for a snack - that was my first formal meeting of Barbara.  We ended up talking, and turns out we had a lot of things in common, but I didn't feel romantic in any ways toward her - rather, I just liked talking to her as she seemed to take me seriously as a person.  You have to understand the 20-year-old me then - I was a shy, skinny West Virginia boy with a squeaky voice and I dressed like I was 60 then despite my much younger age.  I didn't think many girls would take an interest in me, because I embodied the classic geek look.  Later, I found out that at least 3 girls were eyeing me on campus then - one was a demure little Laotian girl named Chia, and the other one was another new girl who had started on campus at the same time I did.  Chia was cute too, and in retrospect I may have found her to be a perfect soulmate.  But, I ended up talking to Barbara, and we developed a very platonic friendship.  In time, Barbara actually started attending the Foursquare church in Alabama where I was a member, and she would also eventually leave the school and would spend the next year or two living in a roach-infested apartment in Dothan, AL, during which time our relationship became official.  When we did eventually marry in 1992, she still lived in that place, and it was our home until we left that summer to move to Lakeland, FL, where I would finish out my college education at Southeastern University there.   As to how we ended up going from friends to dating, I will save that story for another time.  However, that is how Barbara and I met, on the doorstep of her dorm room on a cool Florida February night.  

Almost 40 years knowing each other tends to create a strong bond, and although we did end up married and stayed married for 27 years, our friendship preceded our marriage and long outlasted it too.  As it seemed like everyone in my family was either dying off or just lost contact, I was starting to feel frighteningly alone - the one constant though was Barbara, and we remained close even when adversity tried to divide us.  We ended up essentially becoming each other's family, as our own families just sort of distanced themselves from us.  In reflecting on this recently, this is where I began to understand that a new family dynamic was being created, and other people are in that orbit now although they are far away at this time.  However, I feel God will somehow bring us all together, and out of a group of broken, misplaced people will rise a new family dynamic.  Some of these newer people are destined to become family now - I am actually seeing someone special, and will reveal more about who she is later, but she is an amazing woman.  Barbara also has a situation where she might be having a new family situation in her lap as well, and that too is up to her as to when to reveal that.  Nonetheless, we all have a close networking between us now, and it will be exciting to see what that will look like once everything falls into place.  

The lesson here is a simple one - family doesn't have to be defined by blood necessarily, as often a loving support structure can evolve that includes people not biologically connected, and it has all the attributes of a family.  In some cases, that dynamic is stronger than blood ties because people genuinely care for and look out for each other, even when their own blood forsakes them.   It is similar with the Church too - when we accept Christ and are baptized, we become part of not just a religious community, but also an extended family.  If the Church functions as the Church, a solid familial structure will take root and it encourages and strengthens all who are part of it.  While generations of biological families can belong to a church too, it is the community a church fosters which is its greatest strength.  That, I believe, is the ultimate lesson to take away from this.

That was mainly what I wanted to share today, so I will see you next visit.