Cutting Through Family Secrets

 

While I was reading this tragedy that is soaked in love, my wife and I watched a three part documentary about Ernest Hemingway. Intertwined with photographs, home movies, and news clips were insights from writers and journalists whose craft and style had been influenced by Hemingway. Among them was Abraham Verghese, the author of Cutting for Stone. Seeing him explain Hemingway and his own debt to the famous writer shed new light on the action and themes within this novel. Death but also, sometimes violent as well as unrequited, yet costly even when realized, love wind through the book. The complex relationship between two twins born as their mother died and their father flees shapes the narrative. Both parents and later both sons are medical doctors. The last name of the father, and the sons, is Stone, and the father and one son are surgeons, hence one aspect of cutting for Stone. Literary allusions and historical events instill elegance and points of reference. The final seventy pages were the most powerful; they moved me to tears.

Families sometimes conceal secrets that make lives much more difficult for subsequent generations.  Fear of social acceptability or of responsibility rend relationships before they have a chance to form. Family secrets maim communication, they stunt the possibility of knowing fully.  In my own family, in one line, secrets tied apparently to social acceptance coupled with a courthouse fire have made it difficult to trace the genealogy beyond a certain person and her partner. Were they married? What ethnicity (ethnicities) were they? We don't know, although there has been speculation.  In the novel, feelings about the father who had fled influence the development of the sons and of course of the narrative.  As in the story, often in real families there are narratives, habits, and tendencies that appear again and again. Knowing the story of one's own family may not always bring joy, but can produce understanding and the potential for forgiveness. Verghese's story of the Stone family is complex and sometimes tragic, but also demonstrates how desire to help others and innate skills can help overcome obstacles, even while emotions and fear create new hurdles to clear. My prayer is that we can navigate the complexity of our backgrounds to learn how to love one another and to forgive those who have hurt us, or through their decisions, handicapped us. Ask questions about events or relationships you do not understand.  Realize that what embarrasses me or you may be helpful information for future generations. Speak truth to each other, but do so with love and compassion.

 

During the last weeks of hurricane season, I inadvertently read this engaging novel, Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward,  about a family of teenagers in Louisiana in 2005 who themselves are in the path of what will become Hurricane Katrina. The primary spokesperson for the family, to the reader at least, is the only girl in the family, Esch, a 14- or 15-year-old, who along with her siblings struggles with ethical and moral decisions ranging from dog fighting to stealing to learning that she's pregnant to dealing with an alcohol-impaired widowed father to keeping afloat in school to figuring out whom to trust and love.  The title of the book has more to do with surviving than dog fighting. Her brothers individually deal with trying to keep an opportunity for an athletic scholarship alive, breeding and fighting and cherishing dogs, and themselves navigating emotional relationship boundaries with friends and siblings. I suspected when I began that this might be a quickly read YA novel, but then the narrative quickly lurched into serious adult, survival related themes that teens without adequate adult supervision confront in a life-threatening environment (gangs, drugs, imminent Category 5 hurricane environment) in a decrepit house as they battle for survival, values formation, and identity.  The pace of the narrative began at a too leisurely pace, but picked up and the last section, for me at least, was riveting.  The characters speak in a dialect that sometimes was a little hard to follow and use language that sometimes is course and profane. I've had considerable training and some experience in hurricane preparation and response strategies; the challenges for the family and their community struck me as quite realistic, as did their responses to those challenges. Religion is less of an influential factor for this family than peer pressure, economic status, and family traditions.  Friends and compassionate strangers can form community that makes survival possible during harrowing experiences. At times while reading the book, I wanted to throw up my hands and shout, "Can't you see that you're hurting yourself (or your father or your brother or your daughter or your sister) with that choice of action or words?" In the end, potential light at the end of the tunnel flickers for the reader, who is unsure whether the characters will see that light or not. 

  Life can be very hard.  Having trustworthy friends and mentors can help us navigate treacherous situations.  Having a community who loves and respects each of us makes it possible to survive in more healthy ways.  This book doesn't deal directly with it, but a church should be that kind of community, especially when it seeks to follow a Lord who urged that loving God and loving your neighbor are the two greatest command.

The Way of the Cross for Families

 

Russell Moore writes in his book The Storm Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home with humble self-disclosure from experience in ministry and as a member of family, both physical and spiritual. He mixes both bittersweet and humorous anecdotes with serious reflections on the meaning of life and scripture. Family carries varying shadows and supports for each of us. Moore reveals how burdens of family responsibility may bring blessing and how tragedy may bear the seeds for hope. He has an aversion to baptism that he never really explains, but otherwise I found this book moving and helpful. I recommend it to you.

The theme of the cross reshaping the storm-tossed family struck a chord with me.  The pressures that culture, peers, and extended family exert upon our choices threaten the influence of religious beliefs in our decision-making processes.  The letter of 1 Peter in the New Testament discusses at length how Christians are to follow the example of Jesus, specifically in suffering. Most of us would prefer to avoid suffering, I suspect, but achieving success in furthering significant causes may demand it.  Serving as a soldier exposes one to potential maiming or loss of life.  Military service and sports participation often require placing personal preferences second to what is best for the team.  This too is true for the Christian as member of a family whether that family is his spouse and children or the church.  We submit our desires to the needs of other family members.  Love sometimes requires difficult, seemingly impossible decisions.  When repeated abuse and habitual, unrepentant betrayal mar the home atmosphere, the Christian's choice will be one that benefits the family as a whole. Separation or divorce may be necessary to protect not only personal safety, but to ensure the welfare of children, and to motivate the offender toward reform or seeking healing of what causes the violence or addictive behavior. Patience, commitment (keeping promises), and love prompt the Christian to seek what will be best.  That may not always be easy to discern. One of my children had health problems that other family members sometimes dismissed as minor or even attention-seeking devices.  That child died in his twenties; his health problem had caused lethal damage despite our attempts to seek treatment that would heal him.  

Seek the salvation of your family, but seek to improve their physical and emotional health as well. Pursue a lifestyle that improves health and affirms the value of life. Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus. He is the author and perfecter of our faith, and his way is the path to salvation for you and those whom you love. If your family is rocked by conflict, betrayal, or harmful impact from personal choices,  seek help from strong, trustworthy advisors who will affirm your faith in Christ while protecting your safety.  The way of the cross is not easy, but is the way to love.