The Imperfect Family Table

'Although the table is a place for intimacy, we all know how easily it can become a place of distance, hostility, and even hatred.  Precisely because the table is meant to be an intimate place, it easily becomes the place we experience the absence of intimacy.  

The table reveals the tensions among us.  When husband and wife don’t talk to each other, when a child refuses to eat, when brothers and sisters bicker, when there are tense silences, then the table becomes hell, the place we least want to be.

The table is the barometer of family and community life.  Let’s do everything possible to make the table the place to celebrate intimacy.'
- Henri Nouwan

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It's circa 1960s, this photo is, with loved ones gathered around the mahogany table, layered in white linen starched and pressed within an inch of its life.  All have donned their Sunday go-to-meeting attire and another homemade feast has been savored.  The main course {savory chicken and dumplings laced with fresh rosemary ... or perhaps a herbed roast leg of lamb with mint jelly} has been polished off.  Dessert is about to be served on the beautiful blue-rimmed china.  Fresh flowers create the centerpiece, and that ain't no store bought cake front and center.  Blue depression glasses are filled with ice cold milk, and smiles and laughter wrap themselves 'round and 'round the crowded room.

This is a feast of love and laughter that somehow springs from imperfect hearts in an imperfect family.  And only by His grace are there seldom tense silences or harsh words as we gather together.  For this is a safe place and this is the stuff that memories are woven of, secure and warm and strong.

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Fast forward to 2016.  Six of those adults now dine with Jesus in the most spectacular dining room ever.  The little cousins {I am unseen on the far left} are now all in their 50s and 60s and are scattered over four states.  They very rarely gather, which makes any reunions oh so sweet.

Two generations later, I am now the presiding granny at yet another table.  Sweatshirts and jeans are the Sabbath attire.  A new passel of cousins gather with their parents and grandparents.  We're talking hot dogs straight off the grill, spinach salad tossed with fresh veggies, hot homemade applesauce, and chips.

Any treasured remnants of Grandma's mid-century china are stashed away in someone's cupboard somewhere, and we dine on rectangular styrofoam plates and glasses hastily pulled from the kitchen cabinet.  A typical dessert at this table?  Rarely homemade.  There is no time or energy for that these days.  Ice cream comes out of the freezer, and Hershey's syrup and sprinkles and whipped cream from a can does the trick.

Yet half a century later, the barometer reads the same.  It's a different time, a different place, but one central truth remains.

This is a feast of love and laughter that somehow springs from imperfect hearts in an imperfect family.  And only by His grace are there seldom tense silences or harsh words as we gather together.  For this is a safe place and this is the stuff that memories are woven of, secure and warm and strong.

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I wipe the spills and the crumbs from my husband's handcrafted table, scarred barn wood redeemed from the scrap heap, marred with scratches, gouges, and knots.  This imperfect heart overflows with gratitude for childhood memories way back in the day ... and this, the here and now.  For a rare Christ-centered legacy that wends its way through the generations.  For those little ones careening through the house, shouts and laughter and occasional tears echoing as bare feet pound on smooth wood in the hall, up and down the stairs.

I head back to the kitchen, stepping around an assortment of little sneakers and boots kicked to the side and abandoned toys hastily dropped along the way.  I join my daughters in wrapping leftovers and washing dishes.  We wipe down sticky counters and close the fridge and cupboard doors tight.

But the hearts of those who fill this home today?  As imperfect as they are, somehow, some way, by His miraculous grace they remain open wide to each other through the toughest of times, the unexpected changes, the differences in personality and opinion, the miles that separate.

And in the process of attempting to love each other well, those same hearts remain wide open to their Heavenly Father from whom all comfort and blessings have flowed.

Imperfect hearts.  Imperfect family.  Imperfect table. 

Redeemed.

adapted

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