Family, to have or not.

Life is like a bowl of cherries, but comes along with the pits.


I just read a very sad blog written by A woman with four siblings. For one reason or another she has made a concious decision to exclude her siblings from her family life.
The author of the post has made a recent choice to exclude one of her sisters from her life because she didnt show up to the authors childs preschool graduation. She had told the children she would be at the celebration but then failed to show up. The author said her children were so upset at their aunty not being there. So to avoid having her children dissapointed again she would just not ever have her involved with the children in the future.

I know we sometimes expect the people in our lives to have certain standards and morals. We can be truley dissapointed when important people in our lives fail to live up to our expectations of how they should adequetly fulfull their roles in our families lives.

But is it right to exclude them from our lives because we feel our children should not be exposed to a less than perfect family. Isnt it a better example to our children to love our family members, in spite of their shortcomings?

I can understand that alot of negativity can come with some of these relationships. But in my mind, kids learn more from seeing a family struggle to accept eachother inspite of flaws, than to dismiss a family member if they cant be perfect.

I have people in our family that have caused grief at times and I know, I have been difficult to love at times myself. Sure, it may be easy to say "to hell with them" and walk away from that relationship for good.

I have lost love ones where I had no control over the matter. Death comes and takes them from you, painful, but beyond your control.

But to lose a loved one by choice?

Just to walk away from someone because they can be difficult to be with?

Ive been in that situation a couple of times, and when the option to walk away was considered, it was so heartbreaking that I just couldnt do it.

No matter how trying the people in our lives can be, they are our flesh and blood. The pain that is there sometimes is better than the alternative...

Loss by choice...

calm by exclusion...

a life free of conflict but empty of any sort of real resolution.

In my experience, the rewards gained by struggling though issues brings a greater love and peace than just walking away.

This is just my opinion.