I think we all dream about having the perfect family from time to time. Lately, I have been thinking a lot about the kind of family I want mine to be someday. I am not talking about the family I have now, but the one I want to have as my own. Recently, I have been thinking a lot about silly little activities, traditions, and rituals I would like to establish with my family someday. I have always dreamed of how I would like my family to look, but I don’t think I have ever really thought about what kinds of things I want them [us] to do. I think some of this thinking was perpetuated last week in my Christian marriage class when we talked about family commitment and the role of family traditions, rituals, and routines. As classmates shared about the kind of things their families do together, I got a little sad thinking about how my family never really established many rituals or traditions. I then started thinking about all the different types of traditions I would like to establish with my own family someday. I thought of many things I would like to see my own family do: like go on annual camping trips, go fishing, go blueberry picking, go skiing, have picnics in the backyard, fly kites together, etc. And then I began to think of some more serious rituals I would like to start too, like praying together –not just at dinner time but around the clock and having regular devotions together. I thought of a few traditions too –I have been thinking about how cool it would be to fast every Thanksgiving instead of having a big feast like everyone else in America so we can think, in a more powerful way, about the less fortunate who have no food (although this one may be tough if my husband has a lot of family whom we are expected to celebrate Thanksgiving with and there’s food involved…unless we can convince them to all join in this tradition). I also think it would be cool to celebrate the Passover meal so that our children can better understand it and it would be more meaningful this way. I also thought of a ton of other traditions I would like to start but I am afraid that if I state anymore I might start to sound like this spiritually pretentious control freak who uses monastic means to discipline her children.
…but, one last thing before I move on from this silly stuff. Although I know many girls dream about what kind of wedding they would like to have, I honestly don’t think too much about that (after all, it’s the marriage that matters anyway not the wedding ceremony…I never understood some people’s obsessions with planning every single detail of their wedding). However, I have been thinking about whom I want to invite to my wedding. The first thing that comes to mind when I think about this is the parable of the great banquet in Luke 14. Jesus talks about how, when throwing a party, one should invite the poor and downcast in society instead of just friends and relatives who can repay you by inviting you to their feasts and celebrations. I have dreamt for a while of using this principle when making out my wedding guest list. I think it would be so cool to have this destination wedding somewhere like maybe the D.R. and invite a whole orphanage of orphans. I would dress all the little orphan boys in white dress shirts and the little girls in sundresses and all the girls could be the flower girls. Of course, the wedding would be more meaningful if I actually knew some of the wedding guests. Over the last few years, I have realized my deep passion for orphans. This realization was really brought to my attention while I was in Guatemala. It would be pretty sweet to have a wedding in Antigua, Guatemala with some orphan guests that I have already met when I was there. My plan is to do some more orphan work after college so who knows when I will encounter all my wedding guests :)
I guess we all have dreams and visions for how we want life to turn out –some are more realistic than others. When I wrote “perfect” I meant “perfect” as a relative and subjective term. What’s perfect for one person may look very imperfect to another person.
I think a lot of times the desire to want to create that perfect family stems from growing up in a not so perfect family and the further your family is from your ideal of perfection the more you dream and desire to create the most perfect family ever.
I was just thinking...if someone finds themselves dreaming a lot about what they want their family to be like, does this mean that they are not fully satisfied or content in God? I don’t think so...I think we are all naturally restless and we will forever feel some discontent (to different degrees depending on life’s circumstances) until we are reunited with our Heavenly Father. I think that little bothersome discontentment we feel at times is very necessary; otherwise, without it we wouldn’t have as strong as a desire for God or a desire to want to know Him more. Without some longing for better earthly families, we probably wouldn’t crave God’s family as much.
I am so thankful that I will soon be a part of God’s perfect, eternal family. But until then, let the longing continue for it is within that longing that the desire is strengthened and it is the discontentment that perpetuates both.
