Since no one really reads this blog, I'm going to turn it into my own personal diary. I type so much faster than I write and somehow there is something mysteriously beautiful about rolling up my private thoughts into a bottle and sending them out to cyber sea.
I just want to scream sometimes that people without children are people, too!
This Christmas, as with most major holidays, Stephen and I were reminded of the intense pressure our society puts on perpetuating the nuclear family. If we are not being told that "having children are a life changing event that we must experience" then we are being told that having children "would take a lot of sacrifice we might not be ready for" —implying somehow that how we live as a child-free couple is easy and selfish.
It's harder for folks that don't fit into this nuclear mold, especially around the holidays. Our society is told to nurture relationships with children (as it should), but we abandon our adult relationships sometimes and no one says a word. Where does this come from? God wanted the model for marriage and family to "be fruitful and multiply" the human race but, I don't think this means solely procreation in the literal sense. I think we are to spread his ministry of Love. Sometimes that might look like being single and working in the community. Sometimes that might look like a child-free couple having surrogate relationships that glorify Him.
It's this very phenomenon that scares me and make me want to stay child free. I don't want all of the conversations I have with my Mom to solely revolve around my kids. I don't want my children, in turn, to think the world revolves around them and that they shouldn't have compassion and connection with other people in our family that are single or alone—or even people in their community that might need them. If I had kids, I would want them to belong to others.
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I had a steady career, a nice house, a retirement plan and long marriage at one time in my life. Someday I will have them again, but I don't think that is the stuff of family preparation. What is a family? I think this is an important thing we should ask ourselves. What is community? I think you can have a family and be apart of a community in a superficial sense, but be absolutely blind to those outside of yourself in need. This is what is happening in America. I want something else...
6 comments:
I feel so scandalous reading your diary! ;)
...But preach it, sister! This is so true! Maybe because I married later and had children later that I am especially sensitive to such things, but I totally agree. Whether because someone is unable to have children or chooses not to; whether because God has not brought the "right person" into someone's life, s/he chooses to remain single or, in your case, singleness was not a choice but something forced on them because of the selfish decision made by someone else (and the wrong decision that I will speak out against, too!).... At the end, the marital status or number of children someone has does not determine who someone is. Who we are is bound up in God's fingerprints upon us, in who He has said we are....
And you are so right: the holidays are so hard for people who don't fit into this mold. :( It makes me so sad.
One of the things I loved about the holidays this year is that we hosted the office Christmas party at our house this year. The party was for staff and their families. Toward the end, someone said, "We don't know who a lot of these people are. Can everyone introduce themselves?" People got into "family units" and introduced themselves - but I was so moved by the groupings.
I was thinking a lot about you guys when I wrote this. I think that time in singleness has made you uniquely sensitive to this issue, too. My divorce has absolutely made me aware of this as well.
Stephen and I were talking about this youth culture we have in America. This propensity our culture has to be obsessed with having children, but when they grow up we either pressure them into having more children or throw them away when they are adults or senior citizens---as if they don't have value. It's awful.
We look at single folks as if their life isn't "realized" in some way for not having a spouse. We look at child free couples as if they somehow fall short of the expected family unit.
I'm so glad my Mom never did this to me. I'm so glad my friends are not like this either. But, it makes me want to reach out to people who don't have it so good.
...Or we sensationalize youth that so much that some people never grow up, and then we have 40 year old men who never take responsibility for things and 35 year old women who dress like they're 15.
-C
(sorry for late reply - just now getting to messages and things...)
p.s. I didn't even realize this thing had posted - I sat for so long trying to get it to, but it kept saying it couldn't post. It did cut off a bit of it, but I'm surprised it posted any of it (thus me giving up and e-mailing you....).
Dorkalicious internet! Why won't my comments post!?
Okay, so what I said well before my p.s. comment is....
Well, now I've forgotten. It's late. Something like: "...and this obsession with youth culture creates 40 year old men who dodge responsibility and 35 year old women who dress like they're 15."
Darn internet.
True.and true.
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