family stuff is hard

I spent the first half of my life thinking that my family was totally normal. I got into arguments with other kids at my school because for some reason they thought that moms and dads live together...crazy kids. I had to explain many times that dads live with step-moms and moms live with step-dads, maybe their moms just never told them that it was their step-dad. I felt really lucky that my parents were at least honest with me. Fast forward 15 years and I can't figure out how I ever thought my family was normal. I'm so much like my mom that we can't get along and other than her I can't figure out how I came from any of these people.


I know that being in your 20's is supposed to be all about "figuring out who you are, which I used to think that was total crap, now I'm just annoyed that it's true. Living in Cedar Falls again has been hard for a lot of reasons. I'm learning a lot about how much I've run away from and what I've been ignoring. I'll look back at this time as a huge blessing because it really is a make-or-break time. I couldn't have gone away for 2 years and had functional relationships with my family without this time to re-connect and figure eachother out. I've seen some of my family more this week than I have in the last 2 years. Most of the time I'm trying to relate to them as best I can and find some common ground, and all of a sudden there's a glimpse of familiarity. My brother (who looks exactly like my dad) was playing around with his daughter and she started brushing his hair. I used to do that to my dad all the time. I'd run back and forth from the bathroom to the living room trying to get enough water on the brush to get his hair wet so I could make it spike up like my brother's. It was a very poignant moment...until my nephew climbed his dresser and jumped off of it at me.

Spending time with them is great and makes me excited for my own family. I have always been told that the desire to get married and have a family is a God-given thing, so I've believed it. One of my biggest fears is that this desire is completely from myself. I'm afraid that I want to be a mom and have a husband and kids in order to reconcile the things I wish I had in my family and be a parent the way I wish I was parented. I think it's just that I resent some of the things I've had to learn for myself. It's been so strange to have to work all of that out recently. But there's still grace. My family is a broken, distant, and painful thing, but that's nothing new. It's just so comforting to know that while I spend so much emotional time and energy trying to reconcile all of these things, God has already figured it all out. He has already reconciled our relationship, and now I just trust that he'll work it out. I'll just stay out of the way and do what I'm told, just like my family taught me.