Dear Sam (name changed for anonymity),
When I did not hear back from you through any of the contact information I had, I reached out to your dad. He informed me that there has been an estrangement between you and that he has no way of contacting you. I don’t know whether to interpret your silence as an estrangement from all of your past, including friends like myself, or whether you have changed your contact information so thoroughly that I cannot reach you anymore. So here I am, posting on the world wide web. Odds are pretty thin that anyone will know to whom I am writing, but if you stumble across it, you will know.
You and I are both men now, though you fall into the “young” demographic and I am ensconced in middle-age. This difference in age means that while we have known each other for the same length of time, I remember you back farther than you remember me, and there is something about these childhood memories that makes the grief at your familial estrangement hit harder. I knew your family intact, though frenetic from ministry and culture shock and family life. You happen to be one of a dwindling group that knew my family intact, and that means you know my family in a way that matters – at least to me.
So let us speak as men. I will speak to you as my friend and say the things that I would say if we were face to face with one another. The conversation will be a little one-sided and imagination will have to replace inquisition, but I hope that one day soon that will change and you can say the things that I can only guess at. By the way, I should mention that your family has been circumspect regarding your departure to a point that I know only the barest outline of these events, so know that I am flying without a radar here.
It is good for a man to leave his father and mother. Don’t take my word for it: it’s in the Scriptures. But you did not leave in this sense. You did not take your rightful place as the head of a new household and establish a new relationship based on equal footing – though respectful – with your parents. Your actions have not been designed to reincarnate the relationship so much as to extinguish it, and to cause some level of pain in the process.
It is my experience that when something like this happens – when the unacknowledged interior life of bitterness rises from its hibernation and begins to devour – that there is a trigger. Some event or conversation or realization releases the pin on the grenade and then…kerpow. If I had to guess, I would guess it had to do with envy regarding a sibling. The only reason I guess that is because this is thematic in human relations. Cain kills Abel because of envy. Joseph’s brothers sell him as a slave over envy. And the prodigal’s brother won’t come into the house because of envy: he coveted his father’s love.
Out of those scenarios you are most easily identifiable with the archetype of the prodigal’s brother, who felt like his father bestowed more love on a wayward son than the son who had faithfully served. When I think back to your childhood, I remember all the downward pressure you bore. You were the oldest, and that is a real thing. You had siblings with behavioral problems, which meant that you policed your own behavior to make sure you didn’t add to the chaos. Your father is a bit of a perfectionist. You are a bit of a perfectionist. The list could go on. It always seemed to me – in the few opportunities we had to hang out together – that you were somewhat relieved to not have to be so….responsible. In fact, I admired your coming of age without having a breakdown or throwing a fit or running away. I might have done any of those things in your place, being composed of a somewhat more flammable material than you are.
That is all speculation, but what isn’t speculation is that in some way, you had enough and blew your stack. You walked out and are now estranged from your parents. So let me say some things about that, if you’ll bear with me. I really want you to hear me, not because I have anything profound to say but because, despite being so sporadic in our communication that it has taken me almost two years to figure this thing out, I really love you. It hurts my heart to know that you are estranged from your folks because it feels like you and I are estranged, and that hits hard.
Look, you obviously want (or wanted) to hurt your parents because you feel like you have been hurt. Maybe you really have been mistreated, but that bottled up hurt is not 100% proof anymore. It has fermented and mutated so it now also includes distortions and lies. Life isn’t as clean and neat as your orderly mind wants it to be. The past isn’t just hurt. Your folks weren’t just terrible parents. It’s a mixed bag. You slam that door to the past (which probably won’t stay shut anyway) and you don’t just close the door on your pain, but also on genuine times of grace and goodness, laughter and love. Your imperfect parents might have hurt you, but they loved you, too.
I guess I’m trying to say two things. First, that your strategy of cutting off the past will only be successful in causing pain, not in progressing towards the soul of a mature and joyful man. You will never be a complete person while denying the shaping influences of your life, and you can’t understand the shaping influences of your life without simultaneously being thankful for them. Because you are intelligent and self-controlled, you may think that you can pull this off, but I remind you that that’s what you thought about your unacknowledged bitterness for all these years, and look what happened: it came out in the end. I think your soul will be disfigured if you prolong this estrangement, and God made you to have a beautiful soul, my friend.
Secondly, that you should have at least a little skepticism towards the purity of your own behaviors and motives. Unresolved conflict metastasizes into bitterness, and bitterness blinds us to so much. Human nature being what it is, you probably aren’t as right as you think you are, and I say that as one who isn’t taking sides and who doesn’t know anything. However, your actions don’t look like the actions of a man accepting the mantle of responsibility, but more like a boxer who takes a shot at his opponent before the round begins and then hightails it, declaring himself the victor. Take your mom a coffee. Send your dad a card. Don’t slip into the abyss.
Ok, I may have just made a big idiot out of myself, but as they say, it wasn’t the first time and it won’t be the last. I love you kid.
Nathan Writes 