Things I've Learned This Week

            Family relations has been very impactful this week.  Or maybe it was just the week.  It was probably both.  The issues that I am currently dealing with are family-based.  The pain that I am going through is family-based.  The struggle to overcome certain negative habits is family-based.  And Family Relations is, you guessed it, family-based.  They are all intertwined, and they are all teaching me something.

            I think the thing that impacted me the most happened in my Thursday class.  Brother Williams (our instructor) took four volunteers from the class and had them represent a family unit consisting of a mom, a dad, a 7-year-old, and a teenager.  They stood in front of the classroom and joined hands in a circle.  Brother Williams stood behind one person at a time and introduced a scenario (the father was irritated with work, the teenager had troubles with school and friends, etc.).  After he had stated a scenario, he would place his hands on that person’s shoulders and pull them backwards, away from the circle.  I watched the other family members tighten their grip, brace themselves, and stretch to accommodate the pressure.  The family stayed intact. 

            Watching them, I realized that what they were doing in that simple demonstration revealed the whole reason behind families.  As each person faced a struggle, the whole family was forced to face it with them.  Poorly functioning families would “let go” and leave the individual to struggle alone or wouldn’t have even been intact in the first place, but healthy families would do just the opposite.  They would buckle down, tighten their grip and help one another.  According to Brother Williams, in other demonstrations the people in the family had let go and the family did break, but the individuals in this group chose to both keep holding on and to mutually support one another.  Good families support the members of that family.  That was a totally new concept to me.  As I looked at my own life, I realized that I could possibly help my own family to understand this principle by supporting them in their struggles and endeavors.

            Within that demonstration was another touching experience.  When Brother Williams came to the “dad,” he mentioned how he noticed that the “dad” refused to put strain on the other members of his family by leaning forward and trying to support his own weight.  The “dad” said that he was very willing to support the members of his family in their struggles, but that he didn’t want to put undue stress on them, so he supported his own weight.  I started to cry.  I had never seen that in my own life, and I was so grateful for the good men out there who love and care for their families so much that they don’t want to hurt them, even a makeshift family in a class demonstration.

            Lastly, something else that has really been impressed upon me over the course of the past few days is what Brother Williams called the difference between instinct and intellect.  Animals must rely purely upon instinct, but human beings have intellect as well as instinct.  The things that we learn in/from our families become instinct, but with the new information that we gain we can use our intellect to act in higher or better ways than our instinct might prompt.  We don’t have to stay the same way and we don’t have to perpetuate negative family patterns; we can change.