“Dad, I’m sorry I haven’t been in better touch.”
We were sitting on the porch late at night, two blocks from the beach, with the waves and sounds of the boardwalk within earshot.
“I know it’s hard to travel with the kids,” he said, looking back at me with compassion and a tinge of sadness at not seeing his grandkids more frequently.
Much in that brief exchange remained unsaid, implied through the words and expressions. All the time we lost through divorce, leading to years of resentment and blame, and building a life apart, separated by many states and different priorities.
And yet, after decades, here we are, sitting together, building new bonds through an annual commitment to spend at least one week together.
We look forward to summer as a time of travel and vacation. Seeing the sites, however, can distract us from the real opportunity of summer: growing in love as a family.
Daily life distracts us in our busyness, worries and routines. Breaking out of the daily grind offers an opportunity to focus on others with time for extended conversation and making new memories. More than the busyness of daily life, we allow distance to grow between us, holding onto grudges and focusing on hurts from the past. It’s common to wish we had spent more time with family, but we can hold back from the effort because overcoming all the obstacles is difficult.
Hiking the Rockies versus grandma’s stories that you’ve heard countless times.
Time at the beach or seeing your brother who seemingly hasn’t done anything right for years.
We might wonder why we should give up amazing opportunities for our annoying family. The real answer is that our family members not only remind us, sometimes painfully, of where we come from, but they are also the people who can best help us to get where we need to go. They share the most history and common traits with us, enabling them to see into our lives. Nothing bothers us more than their unsolicited advice, but it may do us good, even just to listen in humility when it’s off base.
The messiness of family life, in fact, forms the primary means of sanctification for most people, as access to the sacraments and the primary bonds of human affection flow through the domestic church. God has given us our family as the natural foundation for our relationship with him. We come from our parents, just as the Son came from the Father. It’s hard to move toward the Father in peace when things are not right in our own families. The baggage of broken relationships weighs us down, causing us to stumble even after decades of trying to move on.
In the end, the fun won’t matter because our relationships will endure. We are made for communion, and so the gift of summer is to get out of ourselves and work on our relationships.
We can’t wait for others to take the initiative. If we’re Christians, then we must show love and humility first. It would be contradictory to attend Mass and serve the poor if we’re not willing to pick up the phone to talk with our own parents. Often, we set conditions and unrealistically wait for them to be fulfilled. “He just won’t say sorry. He acts like he never hurt me.” But Jesus tells us that we must love like the Father, without conditions, forgiving so that we too may be forgiven.
We want good things for our loved ones. We want them to practice the faith, be successful and live virtuously. We can be a part of their journey, but only if we are willing to accept the messiness of their current state without being judgmental and putting pressure on them. God is very patient with us, looking out toward us like the Father expecting the return of his prodigal son. We can make it harder for our family members to return by expecting them to be further along than they are. If we stop expecting too much and accept the current reality of people’s lives, we might become a means of growth and change.
We can judge our summer by the only ultimate standard, that of charity. It can be hard to know how to approach a family member after a time of estrangement or during hard times. To begin again, just try to love as God loves us. St. Paul gives us the best advice for understanding what this entails: “Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor 13:4-7).
Prioritize family this summer to invest in what truly endures.