Wellness in Families

I taught my first class today on "Family Issues" with a group of about 20 men and 1 woman putting their lives back together here in Atlanta. This is a class I will teach weekly for the next few months.

We made genograms of our families today. A genogram is basically a family tree with more information. It is used to track generational patterns and cycles of things--conflict, distance, addiction, disorders, career paths, number of children, choice of religion, etc. Whenever I do this with someone they are always shocked to see the things that repeat themselves through the generations. Research has documented that alcoholism is common in multiple generations, just as violence, career choice, and religion are. It always amazes me that people never think about these patterns in their families until they scribble it out on the paper. Some families have negative cycles and patterns that continue to repeat generation after generation, while others have positive things that repeat.

My favorite genograms are the ones where there is a lot of negativity and then all of a sudden there is a generation or a group of siblings where there are only positive things.

That happened to one gentlemen today. He was looking at his genogram and noticed that all of his sisters children didn't have any of the drama, trauma, or conflict that multiple generations of his family has experienced. This was profound for him to look at and when I asked him about it he said, "something must have broken the pattern."

When I pause to reflect on my own family and the cycles and patterns that exist I am astonished to think about how good God really is and has been to my generation in my family. We have broken many of those negative cycles and other generational curses that have existed in my family for a very long time.

This brings me to wellness in families. The Bible is pretty clear about bringing your children up in the way should go and they will not depart from it. I need to be healthy--physically, emotionally, and spiritually--and break the negative pattern that has existed in my family for so long. This healthy living will be passed on to my children and grandchildren.

I am joining the YMCA and not some other gym because I support the idea of community based family health and wellness. There are so many people who are suffering and there are so many broken families. We need to teach and model wellness in families.