CONTENTS

• JUST VISITING
• FEATURE ARTICLE: BLESSINGS AND PROBLEMS IN AN EXTENDED FAMILY
  Part Three - Challenges Facing Extended Familes in a Mobile Society
• FACE TO FACE
  By Eddie Randolph D. Min
  erandolph1@aol.com

On September 9 Ann and I will start a new discussion group we call "Home Talk." The discussions will involve many of the same family issues we write about in the newsletter. These are live, face to face discussions. If you know people who live in the "Arklatex" (a local designation for the region where Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas come together) you might want to let them know about these programs. If you would like to have a copy of our schedule of subjects for the rest of the year, we will send it to you if you will contact us at our personal email address nlbales@allaboutfamilies.org Recently, a reader asked if we publish a children's newsletter. We have no plans to do so, however, we are considering adding an occasional children's department. If you have the gift of being able to write articles that communicate directly to children (not about them but to them), we will consider including those articles in future issues.

Norman

By Norman Bales

As we near the close of the this century, we live in a world in which demographics have changed drastically in the last one hundred years. As recently as 1940, 53 per cent of the people who live in the United States lived on farms. At the present time, that number is down to 7 per cent (Source World Almanac and Book of Facts, 1998). In my 63 years, I have lived in eleven different communities. I have lived in the states of Texas, New York, Kansas, Iowa and Louisiana. It is significant that I never set foot outside the state of Texas until I was 19 years old. I guess you could say I've been somewhat mobile in my later life. If you need practical advice about packing and moving, we can offer it. Our circumstances are not unusual.

Raising a family in a mobile society is a challenge. It's not all bad. We have many different friends in many different parts of the country. Most of them are willing and anxious to allow us to stay in their homes when we travel. We are most blessed in that respect. But there is a downside and part of that down side involves the distance between us and our extended families. Too often we only see aunts, uncles and cousins at funerals and there is a significant loss to one's sense of rootedness when members of your extended family become strangers. Some of the challenges presented to us by mobility include the following:

1. Lack of accountability. In the process of growing up, most of us attempt to test the values our our families. Our parents meant well when they warned us about the consequences of cerrtain forms of behavior. When I was growing up, if I were to decide to break a family rule and behave in some unacceptable manner, there was a good chance that it would be reported back to my parents before another day passed. Being under surveilliance by nosy relatives may have created a certain amount of resentment, but it also deterred younger family members from engaging in acts that could result in the embarrasment of incareration or other serious penalities. Such close monitoring does not exist in today's mobile society.

2. Isolation. Many people don't know their neighbors. With no family checking on them regularly, they may have little social contact with anyone. Recently, our local television newscast reported the death of an elderly person whose body was not discovered for several days. Every few weeks, I meet people of whom it is said, "they have no family to care for them." Entertainment has moved inside our houses. Air conditioning has moved us from the front porch to the reclining chair inside our walls. Many people feel isolated and lonely. The popularity of country music is explained, in part, by the fact that it's lyrical content frequently addresses the theme of human loneliness. In her book Let This Cup Pass, Jane McWhorter told of teaching a class on the subject of loneliness. She asked class members to tell her what they thought of when they heard the word loneliness. They responded by saying things like, "no one to talk to, tears, lack of something to do, no one to do for, not being needed, physically unable." (p. 118) When you've got family to care for and family to care for you living nearby, then your life has purpose, need and opportunity. We are not helpless in this situation, because there will always be people living in close proximity to us who have great needs, but it requires more initiative when you are isolated from family.

3. Loneliness. Without the support of extended family, we feel alienated. Interestingly enough social studies indicate that closer contact is maintained among Jewish and Catholic families than in Protestant families. The conservative, evangelical family tends to be separated from extended families by geography and by social interest because the largest number of these people tend to be of the upwardly mobile class, where economics dictates priorities. They live in suburbs in isolation from their kin (Source: Charles Sell. Family Ministry p. 34) Such people are often hungry for more social contact with the church. One problem that occurs with these people involves holidays. If church members have relatives living nearby, they don't want the holiday disturbed with church activities. They're busy with family. But if a young family from Texas is living on Long Island, they want to know why the church doesn't provide some way for them to get together on a holiday. One year when we lived in upper New York state, all the families in the church, who did not have nearby relatives, were invited to our house for Thanksgiving. Nearly half the church came.

4. Loss of identity. When the family no longer has significant contact with older members who know the family's history, family memories aren't kept alive. There is no longer a tie to previous generations. With this loss of family tradition and history comes a great deal of identity confusion. There is some evidence that this lack of touch with family and kin contributes to personal emotional problems in some people. A sense of emptiness, detachment and insignificance sometimes develops.

5. Fewer adult examples for children. When children have little or no contact with other family members, their role models are limited to their parents. The adults in extended families have the capacity to expand the lessons children can learn from their adult role models. My father had a twin brother. Both of them were carpenters. They worked together as partners for more than 30 years. While my father had many positive attributes that he passed along to me, he tended to be short-tempered and impatient. His twin brother, who looked just like him, was even tempered and the essence of patience. I'm glad that I had him as a role model to balance off what I saw in my Dad. Ann's father was not a member of the church and did not attend church on a regular basis, but her uncle was an elder in the church. Her mother's two sisters made important contributions to her rearing. They were significant role models. When children are deprived of that experience, something is missing from their early training. They need intergenerational contact. Family reunions seem to be losing popularity and are often attended only by those who are elderly, but they provide children with an opprotunity to interact with people who have the ability to give meaning to their lives.

6. Greater opportunity for abuse. Charles Sell said, "In pre-modern times, members of the extended family,or the community, interfered when abuses took place in the home. Today with virtual isolation from one another, relatives and neighbors are no longer monitoring these atrocities." (Family Ministry p. 36).

7. Greater stress for the elderly. When people get old they have more needs. Many of them are incapable of taking care of essential necessities on their own. We recently lost an 84 year old member of the congregation, who had no family living close by. In her case, the church provided fellowship and she was very independent. She mowed her lawn the day before she died. Many elderly people are not that fortunate. I still sometimes feel a bit guilty about the care my father received in the last ten months of his life. He suffered a debilitating trauma that mandated his living as an invalid in a nursing home during that period of time. I saw him once while he was in the nursing home. I lived a thousand miles away. There were extenuating circumstances that made it impractical for me to move to his home town and he refused to come where I was. That time was stressful for him and it was stressful for me. It was not the ideal situation by any stretch of the imagination. I was an only child, so there was no one to share the burden with.

   In other situations, children may live nearby, but in their later years they may become overly protective of their elderly parents and thus reduce the quality of life. The subject of adult children and aging parents is not a part of our discussion this week, but it is a subject that needs to be looked at carefully and it is one in which extended family plays a far different role than it once played.

   It's easy to say that children ought to take their aging parents into their home when they can no longer care for themselves, but I learned that it is not quite that simple. In the first place the parents have to be willing to go. In the second place, the state of modern medicine is such that home care is not always an option. In the case of my father, 24 hour professional nursing care was required. It was a condition of his release from the hospital. You can say "the nursing home is not an option" if you want to, but when you get to that point someone else will likely make the decision for you. Your choice will not be whether a parent goes to a nursing home, but what kind of care your parent will get. Most of us are not willing to think about that issue until we have to deal with it, but the fact is that people today have longer life spans. They do not necessarily have improved quality of life in their old age and those facts place a great deal of stress on the extended family.

Have you looked deeply at someone's face lately? Not just in passing, but to look long and hard.

• Artists do: they carefully study the face for nuances to include in their portraits.

• Lovers do: the blush of new love brings long looks into the face of the loved.

• Parents do: the face of a newborn is irresistible (especially when they sleep).

During that eighty minutes, neither of us could move. There was nothing to do but talk to each other ... and look. Look at his twinkling eyes. Look at his beauty. Look at his bright smile. Look at his flushed cheeks. Look at his innocence. Just simply to look at his face. It reminded me of Stephen before the Sanhedrin when they "saw that his face was like the face of an angel" (Acts 6:15).

The Bible speaks often about God's face. To have God "turn his face" from us shows his displeasure and rejection (Ps 13:1; 27:9; 34:16). For his "face to shine upon" us is to bask in his pleasure and blessing (Ps. 4:6; 67:1; 80:3; Num. 6:26). To "seek his face" is to pursue what is good and right (Ps. 17:15; 24:6; 26:8; 119:58).

But to "see" the face of God ... that is eternal! The revelation of the new realities of heaven and earth to John give us these words: "They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign forever and ever " (Rev. 22:4-5).

Have you looked deeply at the face of God lately?

If you have questions about marriage and family relationships, you can "ASK THE COUNSELOR." Address your questions to Mikal Frazier. Her address is mikalfraz@aol.com

Norman's e-mail address: nlbales@allaboutfamilies.org