My Mom's Jolene and Why Family Matters

My parents have always had their struggles, but they also always worked through them. 

My Dad became a Christian first - in his 40's. I became one about a year and a half later, and that's a story for another time, but the fact that we'd both become Christians as adults is important to this story. We were the only Christians in our family for a long while, and that gave us a connection of dependence on one another - something we shared that no one else understood.

My mom - to this day - remains a steadfast follower of Wicca.

The change in religion became a serious wedge that only compounded the struggles between them, but my dad is my mom's one love, and the Bible tells Christians, in 1 Corinthians 7:12-17, who come to Christ after getting married to remain with their unbelieving spouses if those spouses want to stay married. 

Take that for what you will, I'm not forcing it on you, but the point is that people, who are attempting to follow Christ, take that section of scripture - and all the scripture surrounding the topic of divorce and remarriage - seriously. My dad knew it, I knew it, and he knew I knew it.

My dad wanted to serve the Lord more than his marriage to an unbelieving woman allowed. It was a constant struggle for him, and I felt his pain in it. My mom's hostility toward what he held dear was not easy for him, but sometimes faith isn't a cakewalk, "happiness" isn't the end of goal of holiness, and serving the Lord is often found in simple obedience to His declared will, not in our grand gestures or our busyness in Christian "ministries".

My dad would have better served the Lord by trusting Him and learning to love my mom better.

But, as it was, my dad got involved with a small church and, when the pastor died, the congregation chose him as the temporary replacement, because he's a commanding man who's apt to teach.

In a ridiculous twist of fate, my mom's Jolene turned up at the church as the secretary and, seemingly unaware of the mock worthy cliché, they struck up a connection.  Because I was the other Christian in the family, and perhaps out of a need for validation, my dad confided in me that he was "struggling" with attraction toward this "godly woman". She was the promised land, the green grass of pasture my father grew weary of hoping for in my mother.  

There's a lot that happened in the few short months between my dad's seemingly innocent confession and asking me to talk our Jolene into leaving him because he wasn't strong enough to do it himself. My mom didn't know this struggle existed, and there are times when I wish I wasn't as perceptive as I am. Had I been more of a dullard, I may have been as surprised as everyone else when he left. 

I understood my dad's weakness and desire to do what he couldn't so, I met with our Jolene. With my, then, 3 year old daughter in the back seat, and sitting in a McDonald's parking lot, I begged her not to do what she was doing. However, unlike my weak father, our Jolene was strong and had no intention of not getting what she wanted.

What followed was one of the two worst times of my life.

When I realized my father's weakness was as weak as she was strong, I told him that I would not stand by him if he chose that path, because he was doing the wrong thing, and it would hurt a lot of people in the process.

He went on, I didn't stand by him, and it hurt a lot of people. He left with no real explanation and I was left to tell my mom of all she didn't know.

It really hurt me. I didn't talk to my dad for a few years. He didn't meet his grandson until he was almost 2 years old.

But time (and lots of prayer) heals most wounds and I learned to forgive him. I have learned to tolerate our Jolene for his sake. He has since come to a place of understanding the mess he made and has told me as much.

Where we are now is why family matters. I expect my hard working father to be gone before she is and even if he survives her, I long for the day when our Jolene is no longer a part of our lives. I tolerate her, but my children call her by her first name and the one time she referred to me as her "stepdaughter", well, let's just say that it only happened once.

I don't think I'll ever feel anything significant for her and had anyone other than my father put me in that position, I'd have cut them out of my life as "toxic". While I would have eventually let go of anger and forgiven them, all that crap would have ended our relationship.

But, he's my father.

I love him. I understand him. Even though I don't love all that he's done, I love him. Parents, siblings, even that crazy progressive cousin who smoked way too much dope and the longer term effects have started to show - they're all a part of who I am in a way that friends never could be. Blood is thicker. I will forgive and tolerate them where I wouldn't for anyone else pulling the same crap.

Family is important because that bond is the one that keeps you human. It guarantees that someone will love you when others won't. It forces you to understand and forgive when you'd otherwise cut and run.

In an increasingly relationally hostile world, family reminds us what tolerance and forgiveness are really about.

The most damaging thing our culture has done to the family is not sexual "freedom" or "no fault" divorce - they've been bad, for sure - but to persistently and continuously convince us that the family is expendable while friends are the supreme relationship. They aren't.

Friends are not "the family we choose" because family, by its definition isn't a choice. Being able to choose what makes us feel validated, comfortable, and happy is easy. It doesn't require character on our part, and if we choose only the "family" that we feel good about ...

Well, how many parallels can you draw between that philosophy and the ridiculous social world we find ourselves in now? Safe spaces anyone? How about a good ol' fashioned echo chamber?

Your family isn't your choice and, for some, you probably wouldn't be theirs either (sorry to burst your special snowflake bubble, there, princess), but they're the first, and the last group of community which keep you humble and human, who make you better because you didn't choose them.