Family

This past week we talked about how we relate to our families. We covered a whole bunch of ground and did so way too quickly. So first of all, apologies to those who wanted to share but were unable to due to us having to move along. But that is the purpose of this blog - for us to share the things that we didn't or were unable to on Sunday.

Second, I realized after the fact (thanks in part to a discussion with Alida) that our relationships with our parents (or guardian figures) and our siblings are very different from one another and that we did a disservice to both by squishing them together. So since we couldn't cover all the ground we wanted to and since we dealt primarily with two kinds of very different relationships, a few questions/comments remain.

1. How does power play into our relationship with our parents? What happens when that power that our parents have over us lessens as we get older?

2. We didn't get to talk about the middle/oldest/youngest dynamic with regard to siblings and parents. How does birth order affect our relationship with our siblings and our parents? How did you view your siblings in reference to birth order?

3. What about the few that may be only children - what is that dynamic like? Is leaving the nest harder for only children than for others?

4. This is the most important question that we left undone: How much sway should your family hold over you as an adult? How much is too much and how much is too little? How can you tell?

5. A few people noted that we didn't talk about relating to family members who don't believe in the Lord. I purposefully left that issue to one side since I plan on speaking about it in a future lesson.

So what do you think about these questions/comments? Any feedback is greatly appreciated!