Mama Says: Unwelcome Guests at the Family Reunion

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You know how everybody loves going to the family reunion? Well, not me. My father’s family always had a reunion the first week of August. As a child, I always loved to go. It was sometimes the only time during the summer that we got to go to the springs. We would see relatives and cousins our age that we didn’t to see except at the reunion. And the food at the reunion was always so good. The tables would be laden with so many fresh vegetables from the garden, lots of home fried chicken, and lots of desserts. Every woman there had a specialty dessert that she was so proud to prepare. The desserts were wonderful and the compliments would scatter around the room. Wonderful memories!

I went back to the reunion for the first time in a long time last year. Things had changed, faces had changed, lots of people were not there. I mentioned that I had not been there in a long time. In fact, it had been over three decades. I had a hard time going back, in fact, I really had to push myself to go. Let me explain why…

I was married, but my children weren’t born yet. I went to the reunion and was unloading the food I had prepared. As I placed some of my food on the table, one of my relatives came up behind me, placed her hand on my shoulder and greeted me with “Why don’t you lose weight?” I didn’t get “Hi, Cindi, so glad to see you,” or “I’m so glad you came!” just “Why don’t you lose weight?” To say that it shocked me would be an understatement. Now let me explain that this lady had always been a little on the hefty side. Why she felt the need to be so rude that day is beyond me. (I did own a mirror after all.) I had fond memories of going to her home as a child. All that was lost at that moment. I made it through that reunion, but told my mother that I wouldn’t be back. And I didn’t for over thirty years. I never spoke to that relative again.

My oldest daughter turned 31 this year. She has never been to that reunion. There are relatives there that neither of my children have met. Some of those relatives know nothing about my children. Kind of a shame isn’t it.

All this to say how one remark can change your life. No, I didn’t automatically go on a diet and lose weight. But it built a lot of resentment and bitterness in my life. I weeded out a lot of relatives from my life that had no part of that remark. I missed fellowship with some of them for years. That relative?? She died years ago, and still I didn’t go to the reunion.

The moral to this story?? There are several. I have tried to teach my children to think before you speak. Words can’t be taken back. You can ask forgiveness, but it doesn’t mean that your words will be forgotten. (case in point, my 30+ years of boycotting the reunion.)

I can’t tell you how many times in the past that my advice to others is to “get over it, move on, forgive and forget.” Unfortunately, I forgot to apply this to my life in this instance. I found that I had not moved an inch forward, I was still living in the past. Forgiveness is not easy.

I have been dealing with this forgiveness issue for a little while now. Maybe I should say that God has been dealing with me. A while back, one of our Sunday School lessons was on forgiveness. In that lesson, we were told that we should forgive even if that person does not ask for forgiveness. Hmmm…
Did I say that God was dealing with me? Today’s Sunday School lesson was about being a channel for God’s comfort, but in the middle of the lesson guess what? It talked about Nelson Mandela, how he had served 27 years in prison for his fight against apartheid. It said that he knew the importance of forgiveness. He said that as he walked out the gate of the prison toward freedom, he knew if he didn’t leave his bitterness and hatred behind, he would still be in prison. What did this tell me? I was living in a prison that I had made. Was this enough? Nope, later in the sermon, our preacher likened unforgiveness to setting yourself on fire and hoping the other person died from smoke inhalation. Ok, so I hope I am getting the point, Lord.

Ok so at the beginning I mentioned some unwelcome guests at the reunion. I was talking about my unforgiveness and bitterness. I hope next year, I can go and those two won’t be there.

But there was one more unwelcome guest as far as I was concerned. Remember how I reminisced about the food and desserts. Again, there was an abundance of fried chicken, most of which arrived in a box. Now I’m certainly not knocking the store-bought chicken, when we have fried chicken at home, it comes home in a box from Hitchcock’s or Church’s. That is one thing that I hate to cook. We have a lot of chicken, because Aleta is a poultertarian, but it is most often baked. But I was most shocked when I encountered Little Debbie on the dessert table. I am well acquainted with Little Debbie, my husband loved Little Debbie, but she just doesn’t belong at my reunion. I want to see a carrot cake, red velvet cake or homemade brownies, not a cosmic sprinkled Little Debbie. I must say for the most part, Little Debbie was shunned at the reunion and almost all the three boxes went home.

I hope I can make it to next year’s reunion. I don’t plan to take my two tag-a-longs, and I hope that I see some of the old-time specialties and not Little Debbie.