Family Reflections
By Andrew & Terri Lyke
January 26, 2001

Systems Theory suggests that families are biological in nature. When one element changes, the whole organism changes. This is true not just about families but also relationships between family members, particularly siblings.
We recently witnessed theory becoming praxis when our daughter came home from college for the holidays. There was something different about her relationship with her 15-year-old brother. They seemed to honor each other in ways we hadn’t seen before. Though it only took a few days for the old familiar mold to return, there still remains evidence of growth—a new maturing—in their sibling relationship.
In most families sibling rivalry persists, if only at the subconscious level, even into adulthood. Nonetheless, healthy sibling relationships grow into mutually supportive roles that are less based on gaining favor with one or both parents.
However, to develop such healthy relationships between adult siblings there needs to be healthy adult-to-adult relationships between parents and their adult children. Though we know that such relationships are attainable, we struggle to find appropriate names for them. A parent of an adult should no longer be a “parent” in that relationship. And adult children . . . well the oxymoron is clear.
When adult siblings still live in competitive roles where they vie for parents’ favor, they act like children. When parents hold on to their authoritative roles with their adult offsprings, they block the necessary growth for healthy family relationships.
We recognize that our relationships with our siblings will be the longest of our lifetimes. Along the way we have had to invest in each other—in our sibling relationships—so that we have more than just a common family of origin. Our current relationships, though influenced by our childhood experiences together, should be more about our present lives.
It takes initiative to nurture adult sibling relationships. Good ones don’t just happen. Whether they live minutes or thousands of miles from each other, adult siblings have to continually rediscover each other and allow new relationship scripts to take on.
Modern technology offers a variety of ways to stay connected. However, particularly during the high holidays, efforts to physically connect and spend time together feed the spiritual familial bonds in ways that cyberspace, a mere phone call or letter can’t do.
Andrew’s siblings have decided to have monthly dinners as a way to preserve family closeness. The reasons for these gatherings are partly because of Mom—we still want to please her—but mostly for our enduring relationships as sisters and brothers who care about and want to invest in each other.
So, today or some time this week make a plan to make better connections with a sibling relationship. It’s a relationship that is truly life-long. Make it a healthy one.
In a couple of weeks our daughter’s school is having “Sibling Weekend.” Her brother will spend that weekend with her. They are both excited about it. And we are amazed.
November 17, 2000
T
here is a difference between getting married and becoming married. Getting married is a pivotal event for a couple. It is the beginning of a new life, the culmination of a budding relationship. It is a profound profession that publicly reveals love that is meant to last forever. Getting married is an achievement, an arrival, and a threshold to a promise. In our modern culture many couples never get beyond that threshold experience. All it took to get to that moment—the initial attraction, courting, getting serious, the proposal, the wedding—is the price one pays for “getting married.” However, getting married is only one piece of the pie. It’s not even the beginning; it’s only a stop along the way.
Becoming married is another proposition. Herbert Anderson and Robert Cotton Fite, in their book, Becoming Married*, say, “We may fall in love or into marriage but we do not fall into becoming married. That requires self-conscious intent.”
In some ways it starts long before a couple even know each other. Perceptions of marriage that are shaped by the marriages around them, from birth to the present, are part of that “becoming.” Cultural influences, ethnic, regional, generational, and from their families of origin, inform (or misinform) them about marriage.
Becoming married also includes discerning the call from within to discover one’s vocation in life. It’s discerning a life of faithful commitment. This is very important. Such discernment may lead to consecrated life in the Church. It may lead to a particular profession. It may lead to a life of celibacy. Whatever it leads to, prayerful discernment about one’s vocation—responding to God’s call—leads to a life with passion and meaning. Marriages that are born of this kind of discernment are most promising because they are shaped by faith.
Becoming married takes a turn toward the particular when a couple chooses each other. Their prayerful discernment continues through the engagement period. The wedding becomes more of a crescendo than an achievement.
Their becoming continues well into the marriage. As they traverse the stages of life they continue to learn how to be committed to each other. At each stage there is new becoming—as new parents, with adolescent children, as empty nesters, through illness, in retirement, even when a spouse dies.
Essentially, becoming married is a journey that begins as a response to God’s call—a life of vocation, and extends throughout life. It is experiences of transformation and conversion.
On October 5 this year we celebrated 25 years of marriage. Reflecting on this milestone, we appreciate our growth and many experiences of transformation and conversion. It’s a major achievement for us. Yet, like getting married, getting to 25 years of marriage is but a step in our life of faith and commitment. While we revel in it, it’s exciting to realize that the adventurous journey continues and we are still becoming married.
T
alk to anyone married for ten or more years and they’ll agree, if they’re honest, that things are not quite the same as they had envisioned them to be when the marriage began. Some unanticipated goodness is realized while other dreams are deferred, if not lost. It seems that for every hurdle a couple successfully clears, there is a stumbling block, a detour—something that goes awry, something that dies in them.
With every dream deferred, for every sacrifice of self for the other, there is a sense of dying. Many couples never get beyond that dying experience. They mourn their losses so much that separation is the only remedy that makes any sense.
Kathleen Hughes, in her book, Saying Amen: A Mystagogy of Sacrament, says, “Every loving is a dying—a dying to my own time, comfort, convenience, wants, needs, concerns, interest. [It] is a dying to self-interest and self-aggrandizement in an act of generosity and self-giving . . . and it all happens not just when one or the other feels like it but daily, and for all the days of ordinary time as well as in the high holy seasons of a marriage.”
A wife who attended a marriage retreat with her husband phrased it this way: “Sometimes it seems like we have a one-eyed, three-legged dog of a marriage. But we’re still making it day by day.”
To talk about dying in the same breath as loving calls for conversion—conversion from what is of us to what is of God. Most couples can’t fathom this at their weddings. When they make their promises to each other, to the community and to God, they can’t know what they are committing themselves to. The notion of dying to anything is so remote from their immediate sense of hope, and their outpouring of love for each other has no casualties in the springtime of their marriage.
Yet even in the vows they speak on their wedding day, there is a foretelling of the rhythm of dying and rising—in good times and bad, in sickness and in health, for better and for worse—that will be intrinsic to their life together.
Marriage that is lived as sacrament has that Paschal Mystery character. We die to self so that our new self—the marriage—may have life. And the relationship that is fashioned by this is by far a more precious work of art than the buried, limited vision from which it began.
Sacramental marriages may not all have, at first glance, that visible glow that is evident at weddings. No marriage is perfect. Some may appear less perfect than others from outward appearances. But before we rush to judgment, we must look deeper to discover the covenant that holds them together. Revealed beneath the surface is the couple’s story that parallels the Paschal Mystery—of dying and rising. From their story we experience their covenantal love that is of God—SACRAMENT! Though it may look like a one-eyed, three-legged dog of a marriage, it may be the face of God.
July 26, 2002

In our work in marriage preparation we find among the engaged a pervading belief in the “soul-mate” ideal. Though this belief is packaged with great hopes for lifelong marriage, it contributes to the demise of many marriages.
Those who believe that there is a particular someone with whom God intended for them to live their lives may spend a lifetime searching and waiting. Those who believe they have found their soul-mates may find themselves disillusioned with that person after they’ve revealed their “true nature.” They may ask themselves “What could God have been thinking?” or “How could I have been so wrong?” It’s only a matter of time before they realize that this person is not the soul-mate of their dreams. Then they continue their search for Mr. or Mrs. Right in a lifetime of serial monogamy.
In the movie The Matrix the protagonist, Thomas (Neo) Anderson, is asked often if he believes he is “the one”—a cyberspace messianic figure who is to save the world from evil. At first he completely rejects the notion that he is the one. Yet, over time and through many trials he discovers that he in fact is that special person. And only when he comes to the full realization that he is the one can he fulfill his mission to save the world.
When we married in 1975 we too believed that our union was destined. There was so much evidence—our needs and desires, our mutual affection, all that we had in common, and general consensus from our family and friends. It didn’t take very long for this soul-mate ideal to crumble. Through much trial and error we found that our marriage was indeed a blessing from God, but not one that was predestined. We discovered that for our marriage to be life-giving and lifelong we had to become “the one” for each other. Our searching had to be within ourselves not outside.
Because we married very young (23 and 21) we had a lot of growing up to do. Part of that maturation was our becoming independent enough to choose interdependence. We learned that, though neither of us were the other’s ideal soul-mate, we could develop ourselves and, with God’s grace, become “the one” for each other.
The soul-mate ideal only works if our searching is within ourselves and our goal is to become “the one” for another person. When two people who have come to that realization meet and marry, they can, with God’s grace, become soul-mates.
It’s not about finding that special someone but becoming that special someone for someone else. Like Neo in The Matrix, only when a spouse comes to the realization that he or she is “the one” can they fulfill their sacred mission of lifelong marriage in Christ.
Questions for Reflection:
? What do you believe regarding the “soul-mate” ideal?
? How has this shaped your life?
? Are you “the one”?
August 9, 2002

What do we do with family history that is ignoble? How should we report the life and times of an ancestor who lived dishonorably? Black sheep stories get buried and die because of shame, painful memories, and sometimes because we just don’t know what to do with them. Very often we put a good spin on these family stories so that the beneficiaries derive a healthy family-esteem. However, accentuating the positive so much that we deny the negative can disinherit us from rich life-lessons from the sins of ancestors.
When we forget such history we are in danger of repeating it. Stories of ancestors’ ill-gotten gain offer incentives to heirs to re-appropriate that gain justly. Stories of incest, cowardice, and disloyalty, for example, offer incentives to raise ourselves and do better, and to seek reconciliation.
When such stories are buried, not only do descendants lose the life-lessons that can be learned, they miss opportunities to witness God’s action in their lives. For to embrace the contemptible characters of our ancestry requires that we humble ourselves.
Andrew’s paternal grandfather (Papa) abandoned his wife, fathered children with other women and was a pathological liar. He was also arrogant and not very nice to children. There is a tendency with some in the family to ignore those character flaws. Some family members only report aspects of his life that the family can be proud of. Some family members never speak of him.
However, our efforts to embrace Papa posthumously in total has helped us to better understand and appreciate Andrew’s father, his aunts and uncles, and his grandmother. Papa’s story clarifies our family life. It has helped to strengthen our sense of loyalty to marriage and family. It has us cherishing the truth; and it awakens us to our own sinfulness. But, most of all, it keeps us humble and pushes us toward a life of reconciliation—a life dependent on God.
Our challenge is to forgive each other, including those who have died, and those ancestors we have never met. For they are a part of us. Our struggle to love them is the same struggle to love those who are with us.
In their book Your Mythic Journey, Sam Keen and Anne Valley-Fox say this about listening to the all the voices of our ancestors, “Hearing the multiple voices within yourself will remind you that you belong to a special clan. Your people still inhabit you. They will help you to celebrate your myths, sing your songs, and tell your legends.”
Questions for Reflection:
? What stories from your family history have been buried?
? Who are the characters?
? Who do you need to forgive?
? What life-lessons can be learned from those stories?
August 23, 2002

Vacations, especially family vacations, should be times when we still ourselves. They are times when we are more attentive to life. And from that stillness and attention we recognize God in us and we are more open to God’s always-abundant grace.
We just returned from our annual end-of-summer family vacation in Michigan. This year we spent a few days in Ludington. One evening we had dinner at P.J. Steamer’s, a popular local eatery in town. Our table was at a window that gave us a view of the marina and a sunset. Just being together with each other, our twenty-year-old daughter and almost-seventeen-year-old son in the picturesque setting was enough to still us and capture our attentions.
Yet God’s grace was more abundant than we expected that evening. After dinner we decided to finish our glasses of wine on the deck. The kids took the car to do some around the town sightseeing. Shortly after we sat down another couple sat at the table next to us. They asked us about the menu and what we had for dinner. Then a much deeper conversation ensued that was about life and the surprises it brings.
They were married eighteen years and had just reconciled after a near-divorce. They shared with us many of the lessons they had learned along the way—about how they discovered that for marriage to be life-long they had to rediscover each other and how it took almost divorcing to learn this. They shared with us how much they valued the life they had built. Yet, through life’s messiness they had become blind to it.
Another couple was seated at the table on the other side of us. They were elderly, but as they joined our discussion they revealed that they were relatively newly-weds who were both previously widowed. They shared how they thought that the experiences in their first marriages would give them more insights and a leg up on making their marriage work. Yet, what they found was that their marriage had to get beyond experiences and expectations of their previous marriages, and that there were new lessons that had to be learned to be able to make their marriage work.
As we engaged in conversation with these couples we didn’t reveal to them our work as marriage ministers. We shared, as they did, many life-lessons that marriage has taught us. We all agreed at the end of our fellowship that we were well fed at P.J. Steamer’s in Ludington in more ways than one.
Later we reflected on how generous our God is in giving us rich experiences with our family in such a beautiful setting. And then God fills our cup to overflow with unexpected and unanticipated grace in marriage community with four strangers. How blest we are!
Questions for Reflections:
? How has God’s grace been more evident to you when vacationing?
? What situations brought you unexpected and unanticipated grace from God?
? How frequently do you find good in the still moments?

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