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“I remember when my parents got divorced. My Dad took off, and my Mom raised my brother and me. I’ll never forget the sacrifices she made to keep me in my private high school, get me to and from my football games, and save up to help me get to college.” One young man bravely stood and offered his story in front of the group.
“Thank you for being honest and vulnerable with us today.” I encouraged him.
Addressing the crowd again, “What do you all think is one of the most important values our friend will take with him in his own understanding of family?” I asked.
Loyalty.
Trust.
Honor.
Sacrifice.
And they were all right. The young man was an excellent example of the powerful influence of family on us.
The Influence of Family
You can’t overstate the importance of the ways family influences who we are. We all learn our first lessons in life from those who are meant to care for us and teach us the foundational principles of who we are.
We learn how to eat.
We learn a rhythm in life.
We learn how to trust.
We take with us the highlights, and often are given some hard lessons along the way.
Our fathers give us the meaning of what manhood looks like.
Our mothers help us understand how women act in the world around us.
Our deepest, fondest memories are most often in and around those who raised us through childhood and ushered us into adulthood.
But what happens when there’s pain?
The Baggage Of Family
I’ll never forget one of my first international trips to coach some foreign college students on how to understand American culture. They were coming to America for school, and I was going to present them an overview of what American life might be like when they arrived.
I packed my suitcase for the two-week trip, and on the day I left, I told the family goodbye; and off I went to the airport. When I arrived at my destination I opened up my suitcase and found a small note from my youngest little girl. “I love you Daddy” was all it said, and I can’t express how important that little note was.
Each of us walk through life carrying a suitcase full of family memories.
Some of them are good, and some of them aren’t so good. Some of them we packed inside with fondness. Others were packed in there for us tinged with pain and disappointment.
To understand the heart of a human being, it’s important to begin unpacking the family suitcase to see what things each person values and holds important in their life.
And at the same time, we need to unpack the bad stuff and begin seeing places where the inner person sits in pain and discomfort.
When someone expresses a highlight from the influence of family, they are usually giving you a clue to the most important values they hold. If sacrifice is a family value, they’ll usually be coupled with someone that shows a similar value.
When someone is vulnerable enough to entrust you with their family pain, you can usually begin to understand where some of the struggles in their own life will be.
Family is the Lens to the Soul
All of the 8 dimensions are important to understanding a person’s wholeness, but when you begin to dig into the lives of people you are mentoring who are willing to share their family story, you begin seeing into the heart of another.
Fear, Pain, Rejection, and Confidence are all parts of human-ness highly affected by our family life. It actually creates a lens with which someone sees the rest of the world. It is the essence that begins challenging them with their own new family, their friendships, and the way they respond in a work environment.
When mentoring, be sure to give your mentoree a chance to divulge the influence of family on them in your mentoring: family past and family present. You’ll unlock doors you never imagined!
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