As I ponder boundaries again this week, I keep going back to our family life.
What does a healthy family look like in 2018 with adult children? I ask myself this quite a bit.
As I get healthier, it becomes more clear.
We created our own tribe of four people that included many others. We are all parts of other tribes, some familial, some other.
Adult life for all of us is a renegotiating of those tribal boundaries, expectations, hopes and dreams. What can our tribe provide each of us?
A sense of belonging. Company. Enlightenment. Presence.
I have a friend who is Samoan and I've talked to her some about being indigenous. I have longed to have a deeper sense of connection with people, with something larger than myself that is more concrete and earth-connected than what my culture provides.
She made the comment not too long ago that made me realize like Sherman Alexie talks about, there is a dark side of tribal life. There is an erasing of yourself as an individual. Everything is for the tribe. No questions. Leadership is hierarchical, mostly all male. She does not regret not being raised in the United States.
So, much like Rob Bell mentions in his boundaries podcast episode, a perfect world of perfect people interacting doesn't exist. We get to do our best with the tools we have and the ones we're seeking and create community with the people we have around us.
I see glimmers of less stress around our kids. I sense a hopefulness that I can stand down from my hypervigilance and anxiety.
That is mainly coming from believing they love me. They want to be with me and with us.
I tend to look at things like time and letters and comments as indicators of love. Sometimes that's the case; often it's not.
One of my best friends just mentioned that she doesn't like to pray outloud, at all. When we've been in spiritual discusison groups together, she's been incredibly uncomfortable praying. She just won't do it anymore; she feels it's too private.
I wonder how much we look at the world through our lense of normalcy and judge from that position. Maybe that's why the Judeo/Christian tradition was rooted in a poetic creation story about allowing high powers to judge, not us.
We are all busy. We have jobs and busy lives and we don't live close to each other. It is what it is.