I once commented to a friend that I was 50 years old before I found out that I grew up in a dysfunctional family. It was a joke. I grew up in a wonderful family. We have become very different as adults and have had very different life experiences. There have been times when we disagreed on a lot of different things. At the time I made the comment, there was conflict in my family due in part of misunderstandings about the nature and size of our mother’s estate. Our mother was widowed at a young age and lived 35 years afterward. Our father had left behind the means for her to have a very good life, but decades of not having much income did reduce the amount of assets remaining compared to what our father had left behind. It wasn’t a problem for us. Our parents were wonderfully generous with us during their lives and supported each of their children in unique ways that met the different needs of different children. I received educational support that enabled me to go from college directly to graduate school. Eight years of post-secondary education took time and financial resources and I am grateful for the support I received. Another brother and a sister received help with home ownership. Other siblings benefitted in different ways as their needs required. In the end, after our mother died, there was no large estate to be distributed. Some of my siblings thought that there would be more and persisted in trying to figure out what happened. It seemed at the time that no amount of explaining would satisfy them.

As family fights go, it wasn’t very dramatic. We had a few sessions where tempers flared. We were provided with an accurate record of our mother’s financial condition. We figured out how to continue the management of a family trust after she died.

We were seven children. Three of my siblings have now died. Two of them predeceased our mother. The four who remain live in Montana, Oregon, and Washington. We have all moved in recent years, though we moved a greater distance than other siblings.

Among my siblings there have been thirteen weddings and eight divorces. Another brother and I have never been divorced. Others experienced divorce twice. One brother has had four weddings and three divorces, though only three wives. His current wife and he were married for a decade, divorced for a decade, then married again. I officiated at three weddings of my siblings, all of which ended in divorce. Maybe I wasn’t that good at remarriage counseling. The divorce rate of weddings I officiated at is considerably better, if you consider weddings that involved people who weren’t members of my immediate family.

And that isn’t all that is confusing about my family. Two of my brothers started out their lives as my nephews and were adopted by our parents before I knew of other grandparent adoptions. When I was studying marriage and family therapy, I hand an assignment to diagram my family with a set of symbols that had been given to our group. My diagram confused my instructor, who was sure I had not understand how to use the symbols. When I explained the circumstances of my family, we agreed that it could not be diagramed. Perhaps that is where I obtained the notion that when it comes to an organization, if you can diagram it, it probably won’t work.

Despite all of that, I am extremely grateful to have been raised in a wonderful family by wonderful parents. I grew up thinking that all families were blended, large, confusing, and very diverse. Our family certainly is. And it has been a gift to be part of such a gathering.

I haven’t even begun to explain about cousins. That would take several journal posts.

One brother and one sister will be with us this weekend as we celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary. The brother was one of my attendants at our wedding. My other attendant was the first husband of the sister. That means that they appear in our wedding photos. It happens, however, that the collection of family photos that we will be sharing with our guests in a slide show includes phots of both with former spouses. I plan to enjoy the party with family and friends and don’t feel a need to explain the full history of our complex family.

The church is full of complex families of every size and shape. It seems appropriate because the bible is full of complex families of every size and shape. There are plenty of stories of unique family configurations including marriage and separation, monogamy and polygamy, birth and adoption. There are single parents and surrogate parents and foster parents. Children are raised by parents and grandparents and people who are not genetic relatives.

I may not be able to diagram my family using the symbols of conjoint family therapy, but I’m sure I cannot digram some of the families of the bible that way, either. Like my brother, Jacob was married four times, but he had four wives and didn’t marry any of them more than once. Unlike my brother had had multiple children with each of his wives. 12 sons are reported, but an accurate count of the daughters isn’t part of the narrative.

From that perspective, I don’t think I was accurate in reporting that my family is dysfunctional. We are, rather, creative. We are also occasionally confused and confounded. We are definitely loud. But there is a lot of love in this family.

We were up later than usual last night, trying to figure out some of the dynamics of a family gathering. We ended up laughing and realizing that we will be having a wonderful celebration. It won’t be perfect. It won’t even be the way we imagined when we were planning it. It is already clear that our interpretation of “no gifts please” that was included in the invitations, has received a variety of interpretations from those we invited. One dear friend simply said, “I read that but I ignored it.” It is also clear that even though the weekend is just a couple of days away, we have no idea how many people will show up. Our celebration won’t be the kind of event that some families seem able to pull off without a hitch. But it will be joyous and fun.

And we will be tired when it is all over. We’ve taken a few days of vacation for our time with family. Returning to work will give us time to catch up on our rest. It is a kind of reverse vacation.

No worries, we’ll be laughing a lot this weekend. Let the party begin.