S8 E21: The Family Table

This week's focus from the Autumn Seasonal Journal is the Family Table.  This season for many evokes thoughts and images of family and friends gathered around tables feasting together.

For some of you, these traditions are sacred and hold precious memories. For others, the season stirs up loneliness and reminders of family dysfunction or loss.

Longing for home is something deep within each of us. 

We were designed and created for connection by our Creator.  

Maybe you’ve never experienced being surrounded by people who welcome you and love you unconditionally.

When you’re young and growing up a lot of times what you see around you and within the walls of your home is all you know. You haven’t lived enough life to realize every home and family isn’t a safe place and you don’t yet have the perspective that you do have a loving stable family of what a gift this is.

And it’s funny because I can look back at different times in my childhood when I wished my family was more like my friends family.  I hated that we would be out running around the neighborhood playing and at a set time I would be called in to eat dinner with my family. I envied and thought it was the coolest thing that her mom would call her from work letting her know what she would be grabbing on the way home for their dinner.  Food from a fast food place that I never got food from. I remember one day saying something about how lucky she was and she said you don’t know what I’d give for my family to sit down together every night around a table eat and talk to each other.  

Obviously, that conversation meant something to me since I can still remember it today but I also can remember that I was so surprised to hear she longed for the routine and accountability that I took for granted and pushed up against.  In my immature mind boundaries and accountability felt mean when to my friend they felt like love and safety…something she longed for.

I see you if when you hear the word home and the family table it doesn’t bring back any warm fuzzy feelings for you… 

Home wasn’t a place you felt safe or seen…

And for that I am sorry. 

I’m sorry because I know that has shaped your life and your thoughts around family and belonging. And I hope you have or are moving towards healing in your life.

Life around the table isn’t always filled with easy conversations and laughter. Some of my favorite memories of meaningful conversations and uncontrollable laughter absolutely happened in this space but so did the tension of hard conversations and awkward silence from hurt and angry hearts.  

As much as we can resist and run from places of vulnerability especially when we are hurting it’s what our souls need to heal move toward wholeness.

What a gift to sit in the presence of others who see your struggles that you would much rather not be so obvious and allow yourself to be seen which then allows you the gift of receiving love. Love that comes even if there isn’t totally agreement or understanding. But love because you belong. 

Love (that as scripture tells us) never gives up.

Love cares more for others than for self.

Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.

Love doesn’t strut,

Doesn’t have a swelled head,

Doesn’t force itself on others,

Isn’t always “me first,”

Doesn’t fly off the handle,

Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,

Doesn’t revel when others grovel,

Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,

Puts up with anything,

Trusts God always,

Always looks for the best,

Never looks back,

But keeps going to the end.

I sat across from a friend this week and saw the weariness on her face as she talked about the struggle of caring for a dad in the final years of his life, a dad who wasn’t there for her growing up. A dad who made home not feel safe, a dad who later abandoned his family.  This is hard stuff. The kind of hard that 40+ years later still chokes you up talking to a friend about it. We weren’t made to be betrayed and rejected and not have solid loving relationships forming our hearts and minds.

That wasn’t the plan. Yet our free will and choices changed that plan…and we are living out the consequences in this realm. We can’t override someone's bad choices in this world but we can rise above them, receive healing, and move towards wholeness through the power of God.

And here’s the good news. The good and beautiful news of the gospel.

You don’t have to fight or earn a seat a the family table. There is a table prepared that has a place setting with your name on the card. A table you belong at.

You have a Father that longs to gather and feast with you.

When you are not at the table you are missed. 

You just need to show up and take your place.

A place at the table where you are fed, seen, known, and perfectly loved.

Have a beautiful week friend.