We’ve had a silly weekend together, my parents, my brothers and I and our families. The cousins have all had an exercise in “getting along.” There are little cousins and big cousins and they all have to get along with one another; make room for each other at the table. We big folks must accommodate each other’s disparate parenting styles; support each other and (when appropriate) gently take each other to task.

There was at least one literal rescue mission. My youngest brother took a sailboat out in a strong wind yesterday. It became too much for him in the broad lake. LightHusband and LightMom had to take the motorboat to bring him back. There have been other virtual rescue missions. Votes taken on whether or not “big” beans or “little” beans are better when baked at dinner last night. Family folklore retold to the little ones and the big ones. Familial relationships rehearsed and retold so that the children will remember who belongs to whom and when and why.

The “boys” have gone home now. Back to their regular lives. It’s just my parents and I at camp now. We had a good weekend together. Yesterday the weather was terrible, today, beautiful. There was fishing and tubing and snarking and laughing and somehow we packed 14 people around the dining room table. This afternoon as LightUncle2 packed his daughters up to to home, I overheard a conversation between the cousins as they laid claim to bedrooms “when we grow up.” They were making plans for the house in the future and how they would fit into it with their own children. Discussing which rules need to be continued and which they might decide to do away with. It was interesting to hear their thoughts on the matter. I’m sure that at 13/14 and 10 their ideas will change over time, but they understand this place in their legacy and that they must negotiate with each other into the future.

I hope that they will traverse those waters with greater skill and grace than I have been able to manage with my cousins. The break that came with them was brutal, sudden and without end.  I have given up hope that I will ever see them again or be in relationship with them again.   There are parts of me that don’t desire any relationship any longer because the sense of betrayal runs too deep.

No, that’s not exactly right.  It’s a sense that there were wrongs done by all parties.  Wrongs that must be set right somehow.  But those wrongs cannot be set right until they can be owned.  Therein lies the rub.  I may be wrong, but my instincts lead me to believe that my cousins are not interested in that road.  Down that road lies the difficult task of mutual confession, forgiveness, redemption and trust.  None of us is willing to proceed to that place.  We all have issues which make it easier to live in this uneasy place of grief, than to work out our differences and face each other’s pain, sorrow, hurt and shortcomings.  This familial battle which is my brother’s and yet is also mine left me wondering about how to work out those issues of hurt and forgiveness, grace and redemption.  Yet, I always told myself, it’s different … my cousins aren’t “believers.”  If they were part of the Body of Christ, it would work better.  Jesus-followers understand how all this works, so they can work these things out.

So, earlier this year, when the separation with my CLB came so brutally, suddenly and equally unendingly, I was taken by surprise.  Again.  There were wrongs done by all parties.  Wrongs that must be set right somehow.  Wrongs that cannot be set right until they can be owned.  Confessed.  Forgiven.  Redeemed.  And trust rebuilt.  But no one is willing to go down that road.

It was, effectively, a divorce.  Now this is metaphorical … and in the metaphorical sense, I was accused of having an affair.  I was accused of having other gods, of being a threat to those in leadership.  I had two choices.  Leave.  Or ‘fess up to something I wasn’t doing.  It was a Hobson’s choice.  Either way, the trust was broken.  If I left the relationship was destroyed.  If I ‘fessed up to do something I hadn’t done, the trust was broken.  So … we divorced.  I left everything behind.  There are some few people who I struggle to maintain shallow relationships with.  But we all know where everyone’s primary loyalties lie … and must lie.

Power brings a terrible pall to the church.  It corrupts even the most genuine and faith-filled leader or follower.  Machiavelli had it right … power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  Where there are no checks and balances on our greedy selves, we will become that which we most despise.  When we surround ourselves only with people who agree with us, we cannot learn.  We cannot grow.  If we do not build in boundaries to restrain ourselves, we will hurt those about us.  That is where the church has consistently failed its congregants, by failing to understand the evil within the hearts of men and women who lead it.  By crying out the sin of the sheep and the perfection of the shepherds.  What kind of family is this?