Westchester Christian Housewife is writing from Texas this week. This is not a vacation friends. This is family life as bad as it gets. To be specific, I was asked by my friend Charlene* to come down with her on a family visit to Austin, Texas. Charlene, a musician and teacher, is originally from that vicinity and visits regularly to check-in on her 93 year old mother. She also has a brother and cousins in this area. She grew up in a southern baptist church with two parents who were committed to their faith. Charlene never felt what all her Sunday school friends felt as they came to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior. In fact, she felt the OPPOSITE. She felt that there was no God, that faith in Jesus Christ was mythology and that science had most of the real answers. The rest of her answers came from her love of music. All that she did not feel about God, she felt for music.
She felt the power of music was transformative. That it had the power to heal and uplift. She began playing the flute later than most professionals do, but her commitment and ability allowed her to move ahead quickly. This effort payed off, because by the time she was ready to enter college she was able to procur a musical scholarship. Soon she could financially manage without her parents help and now she felt emancipated! Her emancipation meant living a lifestyle in complete opposition to all her parents believed and taught her. She chose to move to the Northeastern part of the United States to continue her musical education and begin her career. Read the story of the "Prodigal Son" to gain some insight into Charlene's life in Luke 15:11-32.
For those of you who have read my Blogger profile, you may have noted my love of classical music. The lifelong enjoyment of this musical genre brought me into contact with Charlene some years ago. We enjoyed time together attending classical music proformances and even shared some holiday events together. Although we bonded over our love of music, we had some big differences. One thing that has gnawed at me over the years was the hateful way that she spoke about her mother. To hear her side of it, her mother was a monster and the extreme distance between them was justified. While keeping an open mind and trying to comfort Charlene in her distress, I wondered if she could not find a way to live more peacefully with her mother and have alittle respect for the woman who brought her into the world. I also wondered what the other side of this story was.
My opportunity to hear the other side of this story occurred rather suddenly with an invitation to go down to Texas for a week on one of Charlene's regular family visits. I knew just what I was in for because I have been praying about this situation for a long time. In my prayers I asked God to help bring healing to this situation. Even when there are problems in a family, very seldom is it necessary to detach so utterly as Charlene has done. The Bible cautions us to "honor your father and mother, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." It means that we may not agree with everything they say or do but that we are to treat them in a dignified and respectful manner. Not following God's directive takes us down a negative path in our own live. This was plain to see in Charlene's life.
Charlene already in her sixties continually goes over a laundry list of complaints that she has against her mother. Always concluding that this justified cutting her mother out of her life. So you see the distance that Charlene placed between her and her mother did not succeed in bringing closure to the things that had happened in her life. No, in fact she lived in a virtual post-traumatic stress disordered holding pattern. Running away, never solves our problems. We take those problems wherever we go and reenact them. So it was that Charlene brought her crazy life and problems to Westchester County, New York, as if we don't have enough problems!
One of my goals in visiting Charlene's childhood home was to see if I could get her to attend church with myself and her mother. My thinking was humanity fails constantly in family life but God does not. Hearing God's holy Word on a Sunday can plant some thoughts and direction toward family healing even in the most dire family situations. The trip started off badly as Charlene told me she
would pick me at 3:45A.M. for our ride to the airport and she didn't arrive until 45 minutes later. Did
you catch that, she told me to be ready in the middle of the night and had the nerve to keep me waiting!
There are many chapters in the book of getting to know someone and when I arrived in Texas, I knew that it was here that the plot of this book thickened. Charlene's brother Mark* picked us up at the airport and suggested we have some breakfast together before he drove us to visit their mother Martha*. The conversation immediately turned toward recounting tales of just how bad their mother was. They bonded over just how much they had suffered and they competed for the honor of just who had suffered the most. I just couldn't believe how rude they were, cutting each other off constantly in the middle of sentences or simply talking at each other or over each other. These aren't just any two siblings competing to be the center of attention either. The two of these people reminded me of the two over-educated, pompous brothers depicted in the 1990's American sitcom,"Frazier."
The award winning television show "Frazier" ran for twelve seasons. If you are not familiar with it, try to catch an episode or two when you have a chance. It will give you an inkling of just what I was dealing with down here in Texas. It is is an intellectual dual to the death between Mark and Charlene all the time. Their tongues are like sharp swords, with even innocent bystanders like myself getting a few cuts and scrapes. Proverbs 18:21 states, "Death and life are in the power of the tongue : and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof." That verse so aptly describes the terrible injuries inflicted by these two siblings on one another and others in their life.
I could hardly wait to meet Charlene's mother. Was she the root of all this or is there another explanation? Stay tune next week for Part 2.
NEXT WEEK : HONOR YOUR MOTHER? YOU DON'T KNOW MY MOTHER-PART 2
Will Charlene go to Church? Will they get a car for their 93 year old mother? Will anyone in Austin be safe If they do? God's lessons on family life.
*The names are changed to keep some privacy.
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