Dear bishops, remember that family is messy

“Home is a holy place,” I have been told. I used to imagine that God resided in a place of peace, beautiful music, respect, tidiness, flawlessness.

To the bishops meeting in Rome to discuss the challenges facing the family, I’d say my vision of the “flawless” home was distant from my reality: when I open the front door after collecting one child from school, I trip over the rucksack dropped by another, am greeted by headache-inducing music from yet another and realise I forgot to take the meat out of the freezer and there is nothing for tea. The skies have opened, we are wet and cold and all the washing on the line has been soaked once again. But this is a fairly normal day, so we peel off the wet clothes, make a cup of tea and are grateful that there is a roof over our heads and food in the cupboard.

Where is God in the untidiness, the noise, the general imperfection of family life? If home is a holy place, was God there when my teenager slammed out of the house saying it was the last place he wanted to be? When my tired husband returned home after 12 hours out at work to noisy children and a wife who was equally tired and barely civil? When my mother-in-law, in the later stages of Alzheimer’s, called out through the night and our patience snapped?

I have realised that a “holy home” does not mean everything in its place, no dust, food always on the table at the right time, clothes ironed, order, tidiness. This is an illusion: God can be very absent from the super-respectable, the gleaming surfaces, the pristine clothes.

I am reminded of God’s presence by the stains on the carpet made when we had dinner around the fire and the children dropped half of theirs. In the grime on the paintwork where small, dirty hands have touched in passing. In the line around the edge of the bath that means someone has enjoyed a long, hot soak at the end of a hard day. In the uncomfortable sofa that has held so many tired bodies. In the chipped plates that remind me of so many meals shared. Thinking of these things and so much more, I thank God for his presence in my family.

God is in our reality, not in our dreams. He delights in the mess. He rejoices in the successes, but is still present in the failures. He is the one, constant factor.

So, dear bishops and others, in your discussions, please deal with reality and not with an ideal. Give us the hope and affirmation we need as we struggle with the demands of everyday life. Remind us that marriage and the bringing up of a family is a vocation. Help us to believe that, as St John Paul II wrote, “The lay faithful’s duty to society primarily begins in marriage and in the family. This duty can only be fulfilled adequately with the conviction of the unique and irreplaceable value that the family has in the development of society and the Church itself.” (Christifideles Laici #40).

Diana Russell is married and studied for degrees in theology while bringing up her four children, who are now adult