Week 20 · Lesson 1
Family Engagement
Week 20 of 23 · Family Engagement
Who in your family are you still trying to get something from?
Not money. An apology. An explanation. One conversation where they finally admit what happened. Somebody looking at you and saying they see you.
Most people are still waiting on something from somebody, and a lot of the time that person does not know it and would not be able to give it if they did.
Key ConceptYou Have to Deal With the Family You Have
There is the family you needed and the family that exists, and a lot of energy goes into being angry at the gap.
Some of that anger is earned. Some things that happened were wrong and no amount of understanding makes them right.
And here is the practical problem. You still have to live near these people. You are going to see them at funerals and birthdays and when somebody needs something. So the question is not whether they were what they should have been. The question is what you do now, with what is actually there.
Waiting on somebody to become what they never were is a way to lose years while feeling like you are doing something.
Journal Question
What are you still waiting for from somebody in your family? Write it plain. Then write what your life looks like if it never comes.
Teaching PointThree Things You Can Actually Do
Not to excuse anything. To see the whole picture. Almost every parent who could not give something was never given it either, and finding that out does not fix it, but it moves a person from being a villain to being somebody who also got hurt and never handled it.
You can hold somebody responsible and understand them at the same time. Most people think they have to pick.
You can decide what kind of son or brother or father you are going to be without waiting to see what anybody does back. That sounds unfair because it is. It is also the only part you control, and controlling your part is the difference between a man and a reaction.
Whatever came to you came through somebody who got it from somebody. It is going to keep moving unless somebody in the line stops it, and the person who stops it always pays more than the people after him ever know.
Activity
Write down one thing you are going to do differently than your family does it. Just one. Then write what it will cost you the first time it comes up.
ScenarioThe Phone Call You Do Not Make
There is somebody you have not talked to in a long time, and every reason for it is a real reason.
And there is a version where you call. Not to hash out everything. Not to get an apology, because you probably are not getting one. Just to say something normal.
Most people do not make that call because they are waiting for the other person to go first, and the other person is waiting too, and both of them will tell you the same thing about the other one.
Somebody has to go first, and going first is not losing. It is just going first. And there is a version of this where somebody dies and the call never happened, and everybody has seen that happen to somebody.
Spiritual Takeaway
His brothers sold him, and he fed them
Joseph’s brothers threw him in a hole and sold him to people passing through, then took his coat home covered in blood and let their father believe he was dead. Their own brother. Over jealousy.
Years later there is a famine and they show up in Egypt looking for food, and they do not recognize him, and he is now the second most powerful man in the country. He could have done anything. They had no protection, no standing, nothing.
And it says he wept so loud the household heard it.
Then he told them who he was, and told them not to be angry with themselves, and he fed them and moved their whole family down there and took care of them for the rest of their lives.
Here is the sentence that carries the whole thing. He told them, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.
Read what that does not say. It does not say it was not evil. He named it. He did not pretend, he did not minimize it, and he did not act like what they did was a misunderstanding. He said both. You meant this for evil. And God used it anyway.
That is what is available to you with your family. Not pretending. Naming exactly what happened, and then still being the one who feeds them.
Make the call. Not the big conversation, and not to settle anything. Ten minutes of something normal with somebody you have not talked to. You go first.
Take it one week at a time.
Defining Narratives · Week 20 Lesson