Monday, April 13, 2020

Are You Lonely Tonight?

Some of the loneliest people I know come from the largest families.

It seems counterintuitive, I suppose. If there are lots of people, lots of blood relations, then relationships should be easy to come by and to maintain. But the more I talk to people, the more I begin to see the pattern: the bigger the family reunion, the scarcer the attention.

Here is an example.

I'm not sure how old I was when my parents were invited to 'Ye Olde Family Reunion.' For most kids, the words 'family reunion' are a source of trepidation. To engage with the extended family was not what young people would call a good time. To mix with long lost (or never met) relatives, eat hotdogs and chips and gather together at the end of the day for the dystopian family photo where seventy-five sweaty people are crammed together in a kind of multi-layered genetic sandwich (so everyone could have a photo of great grandpa and grandma with all their progeny before they died) was not what I would have called an optimum way to spend a summer afternoon. 

On that day, going to my dad's cousin's house, who none of us could have picked out of a police lineup, we packed a potato salad, a watermelon and a two liter of Sasparilla into the back end of the station wagon and drove two excruciating, hot hours to Cousin Eddy's house.

Everything went as predicted: the adults mixed and visited (my least favorite word) while the next generation of children, very few the same age, tried to engage in various nefarious activities to gain the attention of the adults, even just to hear them yell, "You kids, get out of the grain wagon! You're going to get stuck and then I'm going to have to come in there after you!" This would have been a great source of amusement to watch Cousin Milo shush us out like rats in a basement.

For the most part, extended family reunions are lonely places because in general, kids just want the approval and attention of their parents. That's why (unknowingly) they spend a decent amount of time running back and forth from aforementioned activities to a parent's side tugging on their sleeve and pointing to say, "Mom, Dad, watch me! Watch me!"

We've always simply wanted the attention of our parents, and the more people there are, the harder it is to attract that attention.

Thus it was in Jacob's family.

Jacob desired to have his parents' approval. Already, his mother was willing to give it to him, but his father steadfastly desired to favor Esau, the older. This required Jacob to (in essence) tug on his father's sleeve and say, "Dad! Watch me!"

When the boys grew up, Esau became an expert hunter, an outdoorsman, but Jacob was a quiet man who stayed at home. Isaac loved Esau because he had a taste for wild game, but Rebekah loved Jacob.

As the story goes, it seems as if Jacob is so desperate for his father's attention that he robs his brother of his birthright over a bowl of soup. Because of this paternal isolation, Jacob drives an even larger wedge between Esau and himself. Instead of solidifying the relationship with compassion and brotherly love, Jacob lives out his jealousy by making Esau despise his own birthright. We begin to understand how difficult the relationship is for these twins. They are both lonely, both seeking approval and both having a difficult time feeling love from their father because they believe that their father's attention only falls on them when they are productive.

In large families, the children often establish a pre-disposed system of dominance and attention grabbing techniques. I won't go into birth-order dynamics, but let's just say some of them fit pretty well. Each child, no matter birth order, desperately desires to be noticed and to be loved by their parents. Each child wants to hear, "Oh, aren't you clever, or witty, or talented, or..." fill in the blank, while at the same time they want to feel, "I love you no matter what you do simply because you are my child."

But human parents and human families are limited by both space and time. Divvying up attention and encouraging words is taxing. It's a very hard thing to be a parent. But some of the most basic and fundamental responsibilities of parenting are being present and being loving. Finding - no, making - time for each child and reminding them that they are loved is time well spent.

In the book of Genesis, in the narrative of the patriarchs, we find that the larger the families get, the less present and less attentive the parents are, or seem to be. Perhaps in Isaac's case, permanently scarred from his near-sacrifice ordeal, his ability to trust was perpetually stunted and this passed itself down the line. I'm no psychologist, but we see an amazing lack of trust in the life of Jacob. In the next few blogs we will explore how this lack of trust (and selfish deceit/ambition) lead to ruined relationships and loneliness - especially in the lives of Jacob's wives (his cousins!) who are sisters.

Then, as we close our discussion on the Patriarchs, we'll see how incredibly similar large families and large churches act and react in similar ways.

This will be interesting and fun. Please feel free to comment, if you wish. There are always ways we can learn from each other.

1 comment:

Debbie Gortowski said...

I had the opposite experience at my family reunions. My father was one of six siblings. By the time we started having family reunions - events lasting 3 to 4 days - they were all married with children. One of my father’s brothers had nine children – the last two twins! There were lots of cousins. It was wonderful. The adults had their “visit” time, but they then they would actually play with us. Softball games, giant jump rope, card games, etc. My favorite uncle Don would make the rounds of all of us cousins and “interview” us, finding out what we were up to! I cried when we left. That’s when I felt lonely.
Jacob and Esau were fraternal twins – not identical twins. They had temperaments and personalities at the ends of the spectrum. Maybe Rebekah loved Jacob more because he was company to her “a man who stayed home.” (v. 27). Different personalities breed favoritism. However, I still have trouble understanding the parental favoritism shown by Isaac and Rebekah. I have two children with very different personalities and temperaments. I was the oldest of four girls. We all had different personalities. My husband & I and my own parents never showed the favoritism demonstrated in this story. I believe that because of that, there was very little competition for attention amongst the siblings in either family.
What if Rebekah and got to know Esau a little better? What if Isaac tried to understand Jacob a little deeper? What would the story have looked like then?
Jacob will go on to have 12 sons. He showed favoritism to Joseph (maybe something he learned from his parents!) The story of Joseph and his sibling’s relationship is a story for another time!

The Pit

In the beginning was the pit. Yesterday, I did something I hadn't done in a quarter century. To be entirely frank, that quarter century ...