April 29, 2003 7:28 P.M.

A Complete Family

This may be difficult for you to read. It has been VERY difficult for me to write. Because I discovered something new about myself. It is not just �family� that I have always longed for, it is completeness of that family�or the lack of it, which has tugged at my emotional heartstrings. I am a nester. And I find myself with the proverbial empty nest. I struggle often with acceptance of this season of my life.

Sunday night I watched the television adaptation of John Grisham�s book, �A Painted House�. It is the story of a few months in the life of a ten year old Arkansas boy, a generation past. The story concludes with the youngster and his parents driving away from their home place, the grandparents� cotton farm, after a summer of crop loss due to flooding. Trying to overcome hard times, the family heads �north� in search of a better life. The grandmother and grandfather are awaiting another son�s uncertain return from �the war� as the little family drives away in their well worn farm truck. The young narrator closes his story with his tearful hope that the day will come when his uncle will come home from the war, and they will return to the farm which is their home�

��and we would be a complete family again.�

That phrase, �a complete family�, struck a nerve in my heart. I found myself mentally repeating it, over and over. Slowly I realized that in the depths of our beings there has been placed a yearning for our family to be complete; to remain complete, and whenever that �completeness� is disturbed, through absence, separation, death, or other�there is a an emptiness�sometimes a feeling of guilt�which is always beneath the surface of our consciousness.

This completeness is a primal desire, which is seldom, - perhaps never - achieved except for a period of time. The dream of it was the basis of the success behind the television series, �The Waltons�. It is heard in the haunting lyrics of the popular Christmas song, �I�ll Be Home for Christmas.� Indeed, it is this yearning for the household to be together at holidays, which displays the fact that it is considered to be the hope�the ideal�the heart�s desire.

I believe God originally established the family unit. The earliest nations were really families, which grew into tribes, before they became nations. Every man, woman, and child can trace his or her ancestry back to that beginning.

To this day, our hearts have a built in longing for the microcosm of our own family unit, and a nuclear family is often other than our family of origin, with people choosing their own circle to embrace.

Although my spiritual belief system cannot condone a homosexual lifestyle, I always hope and pray that I will walk in grace and a measure of understanding. Today, when thinking about this topic, I realized something. Perhaps, not all couples wanting a �same sex marriage� are seeking it out of rebellion, or a desire for validation, or to change the establishment. Maybe it is just that same primal need for the �family unit�, and they are willing to permanently commit to someone in order to try to create it. (I know this is probably not a �light bulb moment� for most of you, but I never said I wasn�t SLOW.)

��and we would be a complete family again.� That�s IT! Grisham knew how to push the right button.

I suppose comfort comes in knowing that in this human family we are not alone. The author could touch my heart with those words, only because those emotions are universal. They are an integral part of the human experience. They make us whole, not broken.

A mentor of mine once said to me, �It is the scars in a person�s life that tell their story.�

Everybody has a story�remember?

Text � copyright 2003 - 2008 The Homespun Philosopher

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