Impractical Post Full of Religious References, Personal Reflection, and Run-On Sentences

This post has nothing practical in it.  It is evidence that I spend too much time thinking, “when was the last diaper change?” when I would prefer to be thinking, “what is the meaning of life?”  But since this blog is called “Analytical Mom,” and I have previously expressed my desire to just blog what I feel like, when I feel like it, consider yourself doubly warned.  If you want to read something practical, go read this instead (surprise link…you never know what you’ll get when you click on it!).

I am currently in the midst of a family reunion.  It’s my grandparents’ 60th wedding anniversary, and my mom’s whole side of the family (all 5 of her siblings, plus many of their children, and many of their grandchildren, and a few great uncles and aunts) have descended upon our home (good thing we live at a campground…).

The kids and I are taking a brief break from all the action to enjoy afternoon naps.  Well, they are enjoying naps.  I have been coloring in butterflies, because I am making laminated number-learning cards, and the color printer wasn’t working.  If I’m going to laminate number cards, I’m going to do it right – no black and white butterflies here!  So I’ve been doing some colored-penciling and enjoying the silence in my house.  And thinking.

My mom and dad grew up in southern California.  When they grew up, four of my mom’s siblings married and stayed there, one sister moved to Alabama, and my parents moved to Michigan (and then Colorado).  Since my dad was in ministry, we didn’t have much extra money to travel back and forth all the time.  We managed a few Christmases at Grandma and Grandpa’s, plus a few family camp-outs with our cousins when we were young.  But my sister and I can count on one hand the number of times we have visited most of our cousins.  We were blessed with fantastic friends and “surrogate” family members as we were growing up, so I don’t think our lack of nearby cousins screwed up our childhood too much.

But now we are older and grown, and rediscovering some of our family members who we know so much about, and have loved so much, but only from a distance.  I might be the only one of us melancholy enough to notice (or imagine?) it, but with everyone gathered in one place, there is a sense of yearning for closeness among the family.  I wish so much that I knew my cousins better, that I had always been an active part of their lives, that I had a rich store of shared memories to tie us together through the years to come.  I wish my grandparents and parents’ generation could meet for holidays every year, and not have to drive across the country to do it.  I wish we could all enjoy the children in person, instead of through pictures posted on Facebook.

Sometimes I don’t think God meant for us to grow up and move 1000 miles across the country.  I say that, of course, knowing that Levi and I just dragged our own little family away from their cousins in Colorado, and even farther away from the ones in Oklahoma.  And I truly believe that we were following God’s guidance and direction for our lives, and going where we were supposed to go.  I also believe that my dad was following God’s plan for his life when he moved to Michigan twenty odd years ago.  So why this sense of loss, as if things were not all that they should be?  Why do we have this desire to explore new lands and fling ourselves far and wide, yet still desire the security and intimacy of a close family nearby?  Do we just lack the contentment to stay and grow where we were planted?  Or are some of us meant to go “to the ends of the earth,” wherever God calls us, leaving our families like Abraham?  Is our yearning for connection with our families just an expression of our yearning for an intimacy and a home we can only truly find in God?

As I sat and colored with my colored pencils, I thought that maybe in heaven, everyone will supernaturally live near all their families and friends.  Maybe we will, with our childlike faith, be able to share the childlike easy familiarity of a family bond, enjoying every minute working and playing together without concern that we will “miss something.”  But maybe as we leave C.S. Lewis’ grassy plain and venture to higher ground in the mountains (as in his allegorical Great Divorce), we will find that our intimacy with God fulfills every longing.  Maybe our proximity to those we love matters less than our heart’s proximity to God’s.  Just as in God’s kingdom, we are all covered by God’s grace, without regard to “male or female, slave or free,” maybe we can all share in a family-like bond, whether cousin or aunt or friend or neighbor.  Maybe our yearning for family is meant to point us to oneness with God and the family we have in him.