Estranged for the Holidays? You're Not Alone

Research suggests 1 in 4 Americans are estranged. Jesus was, too.

This week Baptist New Global published my opinion piece on familial estrangement: a very personal topic as I’ve suffered estrangement on both sides of my extended family for a vast array of reasons. I’ve also encountered several people both online and IRL who have suffered some form of it. For the article I took some time to look into the burgeoning field of research around estrangement. Few things quantified by the experts surprised me, but much of it did firmly validate my own experience and the stories I’ve heard from others.

My own history of estrangement is unique, and while it cannot be prescriptive for anyone, it does showcase a wide variety of situations and circumstances leading into, and in some cases out of, estrangement. I offer a glimpse of these anecdotally in the essay to encourage a nuanced understanding of the trend—what may in some wicked hands be used as a weapon may also be deployed as a tool for necessary protection, healing, and growth:

“I come from a nine-person conservative Christian family I once would have described as close-knit, but when my parents separated in 2015, my father cut me off without a word. He moved to the other side of the country after the divorce, taking my youngest siblings with him and blocking all my attempts to contact them.

Other siblings defended our father and slowly distanced themselves from me. One brother embraced white supremacy. Another ended up in jail. One by one, the damage I sustained in my remaining family-of-origin relationships became too much to bear, and I cut contact with everyone who hadn’t already cut me off. My mother, once I realized she continued to enable domestic violence in our family even after leaving my abusive father, was the last to go.”

You can read the full piece over on Baptist News Global to find out how nine years of estrangement from my youngest sister finally ended. May it bring you both insight and hope!

If you read the full thing (please do!), you’ll see that I also touch on how Christ himself is no stranger to estrangement. This may surprise you, but—as I did not have room to exposit further in the article—Christ’s itinerancy is perhaps the deepest documented root of his character that we have. It’s cultivated from birth, the ability to come and go as needed. Not because the practice is ideal or preferable, but because it is necessary.

Jesus’s earliest recorded years are full of nothing so much as being a stranger in a strange land. He isn’t born where his parents grew up, where they belonged, and they don’t return after his arrival—they flee to Egypt (Matt. 2:13-15). Jesus grows older as a refugee in a place where his family presumably doesn’t speak the language or share the culture. Then when they return to their home nation, they settle in a town where they have no roots (Matt. 2:19-23). Really, is it a surprise, after all that, that as a pre-teen Jesus makes his home in a place of pilgrimage? That he finally would experience a sense of transcendent belonging in his “Father’s house” and be unable to bear the thought of leaving?

Once he begins his ministry as a grown man, Jesus never stays in one place for long. He identifies with found family more than blood bonds in Matthew 12:46-50: “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” And then, when he comes home to visit, his own neighbors try to kill him (Luke 4:16-30).

The people who watched Jesus grow up—who played and worked and chatted and bartered and argued and laughed with him—are angry. Why? He’s finally telling them who he is, what he’s about. Which, mind you, is unusual for Jesus; he usually plays this card close to his chest. He speaks in hints and riddles and refers to himself as the “son of man” and lets people decide for themselves who he’s supposed to be.

But with these lifelong friends and neighbors, he’s forthright. Direct. Explicit. No guessing games, no beating around the bush. If I didn’t know better, I’d think it’s because these are his people. He’s close to them. He wants them to know more than anyone. He trusts them.

So naturally their response is to chuck him off a cliff.

Or, they would have, had he not slipped away

and LEFT.

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And then, in his final hours, after all his fraught relationship with family and community of origin—what does Jesus do?

What does he prioritize in his last words?

He forgives his tormentors. He embraces the goodwill of the man dying next to him, welcomes him into his fold.

And he hands his mother his own built-from-scratch family. He makes sure that she’s neither abandoned or alone.

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Yeah, I choke up. I know not everyone reading this is religious, but I have to be honest and tell you that I don’t get much better encouragement and reassurance than Christ’s example.

If you’re struggling with the complexities and pain of estrangement in this new year, I see you. I affirm how hard it is. I affirm the truth that nobody but you can decide how you need to handle it. I affirm your right to make choices and set boundaries for your own wellbeing.

And I hope what I can share of my own story brings you clarity, comfort, confidence, and peace.