Other Families and Their Problems

Just a week or so ago, I was watching a family in church, feeling a twinge of jealousy since they are an intact birth family with four grown kids who all finished high school and are now in college. I was feeling bad because I’d quarreled for the nine millionth time with my 20 year old son. If you live with me, you go to church. My son was balking and irritable and, in contrast, that particular family seemed to have it all together. Their sons were smiling while I umpired a rascally row of rapscallions.

This week I saw one of those four sons in the police report, greatly surprising me that he’d gotten a DUI. I felt bad for the parents knowing how disappointed they must be, embarrassed also as our small town publicizes everything. I didn’t mention the name of this guy to any of my kids, why add to gossip that the family must already been reeling from?

I’ve been in their shoes before. Besides the disenchantment with their son’s misbehavior, the negative chitchat is painful as well. Sometimes I think Christians are the only people that shoot their wounded. As if we’re afraid it’ll happen to all of us. Tragedy is not contagious folks.

Another family has lost their breadwinner’s job and yet another family is facing foreclosure prompting my 18 year old daughter to remark in surprise, “It’s not just adoptive families with problems?”

I’d laughed, “You think we’re the poster family for discontent and issues?”

She thought for awhile, then pointed out she’d only lived in a dysfunctional, dangerous birth family, then an unstable foster home before joining our rather raucous, yet exceedingly structured, stable family that was frequently rocked by the buried or the obvious issues that came with the adoption of older children and their emotional baggage.

This other family will overcome this instance of their son’s drunken behavior. He’ll get back on track; they’ll still love him and they’ll help him through this backslide.

My children do watch other families closely to see how they deal with issues and problems. I’d like to use this occasion as a teaching example, but I don’t feel I should say anything about it. My kids are checking out how the jobless family will survive or the family that’s losing their house if only to compare it to my own parenting abilities as they still struggle to understand what is normal now.

I hope that they see that everyone faces challenges; sometimes they think it is just them, that everyone else on earth must have been born lucky. And look at me; I caught myself falsely thinking that other families had it easier as well.

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