Why Family Isn’t Enough

I still remember the lowered tones in the conversation when one of them mentioned the story she’d read of the pioneer woman who couldn’t handle the isolation of life in the wilderness, the woman who one day left home while her husband was plowing, whose mind splintered under the weight of loneliness. When he brought her back from her crazed wandering she was different–and she never recovered. Something had broken. I was young, too young for that story; but I heard, and I never forgot.

What I don’t remember is when I first realized that could have been me, when I realized that had I been in her shoes, miles and months from seeing anyone other than my husband, I easily could have done just what she did.  My mind has its limits, and loneliness pushes me toward them.

We grew up on pioneer stories, or if we didn’t our parents and grandparents did. Our culture was built on individualism and carving out a life for ourselves from the wilderness. It runs deeply in our blood, and even more deeply in those who come from the West like my family did.

And then we grew up in the world of suburbanism; even we who grew up in the country grew up in that era. We live alone in our private houses and drive to work, to church, to school, to the park, and come back home and shut the door. And we aren’t supposed to need anybody at home. We are supposed to be able to handle marriage (or wishing for marriage) and children and finances and food and prayer on our own.

And we try. Those of us who are stay-at-home moms spend hours and hours in the week with just our children. It’s what we wanted to do, but sometimes it feels like more than we can handle. We feel guilty that we get tired of being with our children. We get lonely for adult conversation. The work of running a house feels overwhelming and often unfulfilling and we wonder why, because women have done this for generations and our children are some of our favorite people in the world. And we try harder and get more lonely and push away the feeling that something isn’t right.

Working parents sometimes have to work more hours than they want to, more hours than their minds and bodies are meant for. Often they come home exhausted only to be met with people who need them, and things (in never-ending lists) that must be done. They wish that life could be different, better, not so busy.

I’ve quit wondering if something is wrong with the picture of me in my house with my children day after day. There is. I’m wondering now what I can do to change it.

I grew up in a big family.  I had a sister seven years older than I and one five years younger. And between them in age were my four brothers and I. And at the very end was another sister, a dozen years younger than I. We weren’t always the best of friends, but we did everything together.  I never got to, or had to, do anything by myself. And in my seven years of marriage I still haven’t gotten over the fact that for well over half of my waking hours it’s just me and little people in this house. And I think I’m not supposed to.

This is what I know from spending my first twenty years in a house filled with family: life is better with people. Gutting a seventy year old home and completely re-doing it was better with people. Traveling for six weeks in a van through Central America was better with people. Eating supper was better with people. Cleaning the house was better with people, designing curtains, going shopping, and processing ideas were all better with people. Normal life is beautiful and important, and it’s so much easier to know that when you do it with others.

Now I’m all grown up and live in a little house in Oklahoma City with a husband, a six year old daughter and a four year old son. And I love living with them. We do so much together and my life is so much richer because it is our life. We play games, we do dishes, we clean out the garage, and work in the flower bed. We watch baking shows and laugh together, we pray for friends, practice kindness, and we apologize when we fail. We read stories and give compliments and sometimes get in fights.  We live together and it so good.

But it’s not enough. My little family and I aren’t enough to give my soul the care and love and stimulation it needs. My family and I, God, going to church on Sunday, texting friends during the week, and meeting with our missional community twice a month aren’t enough.

What does enough look like? What were we made to have? When God put people in a garden and said to work together and make the world beautiful, what did he intend? We know it’s important to have help and collaboration on many important jobs, so why not on the job of keeping a home and raising a family? Why not on the practices of prayer and giving and simplicity?

I don’t have enough, I don’t know how to find enough. But I have some beautiful pictures that point me to something good, things that have fed me and have made my soul feel strong and hopeful and alive.

This picture makes me smile every time I think of it. My friend holding her baby in the rocking chair in my living room as he feeds and sleeps. She had stopped by and wasn’t planning to stay, but she did. I was preparing to leave on a trip later that day and we talked, or didn’t, as I pulled out suitcases and picked up toys and swept the floor. She rocked and snuggled her son and was just there, with me, in my house. And it felt so good. It felt like home–more than it normally did.

There’s another picture, a recurring one, of me at the sink doing dishes with my phone squeezed to my ear while I talk long with my sister.  Between interruption from our children I ask her for dinner ideas and tell her what I got done on my latest project and vent my parenting failures to her. We talk about the latest books we read, why having less stuff makes me happy, and how evangelism and discipleship do (or don’t) work together in church life as we know it. I hear about who spent time at her house recently and I am inspired by her hospitality and the way she shares her heart and home with so many people; and I am grateful to be one of them. I am more alive when I am with her, even though she is a thousand miles away.

And then a memory of me in a circle of friends. Through my tears I had told them the things that felt too big to carry alone, and they listened and asked questions and cared. And after they had prayed for me one of them brought me back to something I had said at the beginning of the conversation. She asked how I was doing, really doing with that, if there was more I needed to say. There was. And they listened some more and loved me all over again. When I got home that evening I realized I felt lighter than I had felt for weeks.

Sometimes conversations with my sister aren’t that great — the kids are loud and my thoughts are slow. Sometimes when I’m with my friends, I feel quiet and even a little awkward. Sometimes prayer circles feel ordinary and I leave not noticing a difference from when I got there. But I keep calling my sister and being with friends and meeting for prayer. I keep doing it because I need it, because I am meant for love and relationship, because I don’t want to live my life alone. I do it because Jesus and I by ourselves aren’t enough, not even if you throw in a wonderful husband and beautiful children for good measure.

P.S. Before I send this, I want to say that I know I am rich. Some of you might give your right arm to have the kind of love and support that I have. I am not unaware or ungrateful, even as I say that it is not enough. It is more than so many people have, more than I have had for much of my life, but I think there is still more to be had. And I want it for all of us.