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Not
long ago, I was asked by Fr Peter to speak at the New South Wales
Family Group Renewal Day, held at Terrey Hills.
Public speaking is not something to which I am accustomed, and
I was especially nervous! This
is more or less what I had to say…
Like a lot of people to whom
Family Groups mean so much, my husband and I are ex-patriots (of the
UK
and
South Africa
). Almost 10 years ago, Ken and I responded to
an appeal at Mass for new Family Group members given by Carolyn.
We were very soon to become parents and I was searching for a
way to bring our children up in the Catholic faith in a way that would
involve my non-Catholic husband in a non-threatening way. Shirley
Carroll, Carolyn’s mother-in-law and FG Co-ordinator at the time,
very thoughtfully placed us in Carolyn and Martin’s group and since
Carolyn and Martin had a newborn baby boy (Liam), we would immediately
have a playmate for our new baby.
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Our introduction to the group was quite an amusing evening.
We were invited to the home of the then leaders to meet some of
the other members over a meal. With
the birth of my baby so imminent this had to be arranged sooner rather
than later! We were a
little nervous – we agonised over whether it would be appropriate to
take a bottle of wine, a concern that was allayed very quickly…
However, with everything going on, I forgot to mention that I was
vegetarian. When we sat
down to eat, every dish on the table was a meat casserole.
Since I had been craving chicken for most of my pregnancy, I
kicked my husband under the table and tucked in – at 39 weeks it
wasn’t going to hurt the baby now!
With the recent tragic death of Princess Diana, the conversation
flowed easily… and then it got around to birth stories.
Everyone around the table had a horror birth story to tell –
emergency caesareans, premature births, husbands not arriving on
time… you name it, it had happened to someone around the table.
Less than 48 hours later, our son was born without drama and
while I was still in the hospital, every one of the women who had been
at the dinner rang me or visited me.
In my post labour euphoria, I had no idea who they were but
their kind thoughts and wishes made up for my much missed family.
Our son, David, is now 10 years old.
He and Liam are firm friends and their sisters, also born
within weeks of each other, have a similar friendship. This
is just what we wanted from a Family Group.
Along with the other children in the group, they have a
ready-made family of cousins, aunties and uncles.
So we’ve been in our Family Group for 10 years, 7 of those as
co-leaders with Carolyn and Martin.
For me, the highlight of our group’s history was the Winter Madness
concert in 1999 and our 10 minute spoof of The Sound of Music – we
were the Family Gon Krapp. From
the time the idea was conceived over a groggy weekend away dinner to
the actual performance, everyone in the group wanted to be involved.
All the men dressed up as nuns and insisted on applying their
own make up on the night. Those
that didn’t want to appear on stage helped make costumes, source
props and offer encouragement on rehearsal nights.
It was a time of total cohesiveness within the group and I will
never forget that.
At
this point in my presentation I asked everyone to stand up and form a
line around the back of the church starting with whoever had been in a
Family Group the longest and moving around to the newest members.
Moving along the line, from the side door near the kitchen to
the central back doors were those who had been members for 35-25
years, from the central doors to the seats behind the musicians were
20-10 years and a handful at the end of the line were 10 years or
less. On discussion this
illustrated that the FG movement is becoming static, we need fresh
blood. As the two ends of
the line joined up to form a circle we talked about the ongoing
lifecycle that is the Family Group movement.
In the case of our Family
Group, I have seen the group evolve through at least one dramatic
change. 10 years ago when
Ken and I joined our group as new parents there were several families
who between them had 23 children ranging from 3 months to teenagers.
Then there was another group of couples who were just starting out on
their parenting journey, and also a few single people.
Over the course of 10 years we have welcomed 14 babies to our
group. As the older
children moved up into High School, their families found that the
demands of a teenager’s social life conflicted with FG events and
they started to drift away. That’s
to say, they no longer attended events but without exception,
they’ve stayed on the mailing list - interesting.
This was quite confronting to the rest of us until we realised that in
a few years time, the same will probably happen to us.
In the meantime, those of us with the younger children (who are
now where the older children were 10 years ago) took up the reins and
moved the FG forward into a new phase.
As I said, in a few years time, we may well find it hard to
give the FG the time we have been used to up til now.
However, by then, the “senior” couples may have come back
to the group (and perhaps it is our responsibility as leaders to
encourage them back) to take the group into its next phase.
There must be heaps of examples of this amongst the original
groups.
All Family Groups have their ups and downs – births, marriages,
deaths, divorces, disagreements amongst members, teenage dramas, high
attendance, low attendance, we lose members because of changing
personal circumstances, we gain new members, within the group members
make their own close friendships…
All this affects the dynamics of a FG, we’ve seen it happen
in our group and we have lived through it and hopefully grown from it.
Using
a visual game, we had an interactive discussion on the meaning of Love
in a family group and what happens to the group if the love is
missing.
What happens if the LOVE is
missing from a Family Group? We
can still function but the heart is taken out of it.
Family Groups are about sharing the LOVE that Jesus showed us
as brother and sister. We may not like everyone in our FG but it
doesn’t stop us from being there for that person in times of need. As
leaders, Carolyn and I have a mantra… “We do what we can”.
Coming back to the lifecycle, sometimes the cycle doesn’t close and
Groups wind up but that happens, Family Groups are not a cult.
The FG movement exists because of the wide variety of reasons
that people join them. If
a family or individual finds that they can no longer give or take from
a Family Group due to other commitments, they move on and should not
be criticised for that. We, as a Movement, will always be there to
welcome them back at any time. What I think we can guarantee though is
that they will take something of their FG with them in their hearts
for the rest of their lives. Their
FG experience will have been a meaningful and life enhancing
experience for them and their family.
And to end, I’ll leave you with a quote from Fr Peter:
“FAMILY
GROUPS DO NOT TAKE AWAY THE DIFFICULTIES OF
LIFE
,
BUT GIVE US THE STRENGTH
AND
COURAGE TO LIVE AS FOLLOWERS OF CHRIST”
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