Consider Yourself One Of The Family – Living With The Lawrences

This is the third in a series of blogs on the topic of my growing understanding of what family is.  I started at the beginning – which has to be a first … probably.  I established what family was in the formative years in my life.  From there I went onto talk about the radical shift that took place when I left home and how the Peckham days were going well.  So well in fact that surely I wouldn’t want to leave that!

Family 2000-2006 – Lawrences and Stoke-on-Trent: Keep It Close

The decision to move from London to Stoke-on-Trent was controversial in terms of family dynamics.  The implicit understanding of the process to that point was that I was an intelligent young man who would go on to attain the social and material successes that were not afforded to my parents.  Thus I would go through the expected route of doing well in the exams, going to university, getting a good degree and them making something of myself that would be reflected in my income.

Up until February 2000 things were progressing to the plan.  If I haven’t shared why I went to Stoke-on-Trent then I will in a future post.  The Reader’s Digest version is that I felt God call me to do some work with Hughie Lawrence.  That involved a year out of paid work (and a subsequent hatred for the bureaucratic processes involved in the JobSeeker’s Allowance procedure) and what to some might look at as a derailing from the original plan.  That’s how my parents saw it, especially my Mum.

The first five years or so, were more or less getting to know family in a very different context to what I’d previously experienced.  Here it was more of family on the move with a purpose.  Time spent with Hughie and his family was one of learning about faith on its feet when no one else and nothing else could help.

There were differences to what I knew especially in Peckham.  Wellingborough wasn’t so much about affection and sentimentality and that kind of stuff, but in Peckham I began to warm to that a bit more.  It was a love of sorts that was more comfortable with hugs and physical gestures of closeness.  Outside of the church and family circles I got the impression I was a hug-type of person – definitely given to physical expressions of affection through the latter years of my time before university.  I wasn’t overtly looking for hugs, pats on the back and that sort of thing.  I just found that I was into it and enjoyed it and was comfortable with it in the right context.  As ever it was funny that these kind of family expressions were known outside my biological family and the church.  Funny in the peculiar sense obviously, I wasn’t rolling in the aisles at the lack of that real kind of affection in church life.

So it was kind of there with Peckham life – kinda.  Early Stoke life though was far more concerned with making concrete changes in the lives of people.    Relational ties were not just for weekly services or occasional activities but were meant for something towards realising God’s desire to love our community – love others in act as well as in word.

The Lawrence family accepted me and were really social animals in plenty of ways, engaging and coming alongside people to get them focussed on what they’re called to do.  This kind of family life was a lot different to Wellingborough and Peckham in terms of being purpose driven.  It was no surprise then that quite a lot was accomplished by the growing group of people who joined the family.  As a new kind of family of sorts and getting to grips with some of the familial elements of church.

As something so new, there was rocky times as there always should be in family life.  It was also at this time that I took a major step towards developing family of my own as the relationship with Authrine turned to the marital kind.  It’s only on reflection now that I notice how some of the real difficulties of family life both in the immediate and the church sense were things that I went through in an all too raw and rare style.

When you haven’t had the building infrastructure for these challenges before and as a young person you’re still working through identity issues and where you fit in the scheme of things, these pressures and challenges are considerable.  Such was the mentality of the Stoke family life though that when these were worked on they were worked on as we went.  There was no stopping and navel gazing and serious contemplating.  It was action oriented.  Things would happen because of that and there was also an underlying servant heart behind the activities.  It was as though family was defined by the work that you would seek to do for the other.

The benefits added another dimension to my ever expanding understanding of family.  Although Peckham life was familial, it was still rather tight-knit, keeping to its own.  Unwittingly, the community focus of Stoke life opened the doors to family life beyond my kind.  The elements that I was used to previously, melded with the outgoing nature of the Stoke family life.  This drew me out of my shell in a way that was similar to how Hughie had got me out of my shell back in the mid-1990’s.

So with things getting over the rough bumps and momentum developed and big things ahead, I was looking forward to what life with the Stoke family would bring.  Yet even as the excitement was building, there was something nagging at me, something that would never allow me to look at family in the same way again …

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

dmcd