When Your Family Has Been Blended (Smashed, Patched, Rent, Overhauled, Shredded, Renewed, Sacked) And Still Rises Like a Phoenix

Still in my intermittent procrastination mode -- because it takes me approximately an hour to translate one gospel verse from Greek into English and, as has already been noted, a gannet can only stand so much ~

I spent a little time today working on the "autobiographical questionnaire" that I have to complete for my psych eval for ministry.

Like so many things in my life these days, the questionnaire is designed for people just a bit younger than I am. For instance, it asks multi-part questions about childhood, high school, and college, and then says: Summarize the rest of your life.

Pfffffft!

But what really stumped me was the first page, on which I was supposed to list the members of my family of origin. I've been debating for awhile just what the term "family of origin" means in my case. But then, as I worked back and forth through the many questions that followed, I realized that, if my own children can't figure it out, no one reading the questionnaire would have a fighting chance. I should just list EVERYONE and note the deceased, the steps, and the half. I can't, you know, pretend to have emerged from a typical nuclear family, because my conversation is sprinkled with phrases likes "my second stepmother" or "the stepbrother I only met right before his mother died."

Father, Mother(D), Me, Brother, Brother (D), Stepmother (D), Stepsister, Stepbrother, Stepbrother, Stepbrother, Stepmother (Div), Stepsister, Stepsister, Half-brother, Stepmother (D), Stepbrother.

I definitely have phoenix stories to tell.