An Ode to Aunts and Uncles

...with some application to single and childless Christians

God made us to live in a family. Not just a nuclear family, but an extended family. We’re not meant to have only brothers and sisters and parents, but also grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins, and in due time, nieces and nephews. Of course, post-Fall, that’s not how this always plays out. There is death, difficulty, and barrenness. There are all sorts of things that interrupt this formation. But until recent times, this was normal. People pursued it, and they didn’t intentionally try to interrupt it. The extended family was embraced as both normal and good.

I did get to experience this in a pretty significant way in my early childhood. There were huge family holiday gatherings with lots of aunts and uncles and cousins everywhere. I lived with my grandmother for a long period of time. I stayed with one uncle for an entire summer, and the other for a week or two during a difficult period of my life. My mom’s adopted brother,only six years older than me, functioned like an older brother I looked up to. But the family scattered into different parts of the country, especially after the death of each of my grandmothers. And all that nearly disappeared.

Still, I’m thankful for what I did experience, and it took me many years to realize what a gift it was. And I aim to do my best to re-create this for my own children, though certain aspects of it will be very difficult. My wife comes from a relatively small family, with just one brother who has a son and a daughter, and they live in Chicago. I have two brothers, one of whom has passed away and never had children, and the other I would classify as quite the wanderer, who didn’t settle down until much later in life. He has two kids by two different women, both very far away, one in California, the other in Montana. So my children simply don’t have any aunts and just two living uncles and very distant relationships with their four cousins. That’s just how things have gone. While we’re thankful for what we have, it’s not what we want for the next generations.

Now, this is kind of a long introduction to a post I promised as an ode to aunts and uncles, which I think has some relevance to single and the childless Christians…

Aunts and uncles are generally several years older or several years younger than your parents. That’s not always the case, but it’s the most common pattern. These are people who knew much younger versions of your parents and saw a lot of their early shaping influences. They know whether your parents were popular or picked on, whether they were one of your grandparents’ favorite or least favorite children. They’re aware of many of their early failures and successes. This allows them to be sympathetic to your parents, but also to see through them in a way a child usually can’t.

And again, in most cases, because they are so much older than you and belong to the same family, they function like an authority figure, but one or two degrees removed from the direct authorities God has placed over you. That makes them a little more accessible to a young person. You’re talking to an older, wiser person, but one who can often be a little more vulnerable because of that degree of familial separation.

If the aunt or uncle is a moral person who wants to honor their sibling while being genuinely helpful to their niece or nephew, this is quite a resource. This gives a child a blood family member they can trust, someone they can open up to, who will try to help.

In my mid-teens, a couple of years before I converted, I got into some legal trouble. Essentially, I got jumped, and then went after the people who jumped me with a weapon. My parents decided to send me away for the summer to live with my uncle Dewayne and aunt Karen.

Dewayne was my father’s younger brother, and they had two kids, Christina and Greg. Christina and I were just a few months apart, as I recall, and Greg a bit younger. They weren’t Christians, but they were very kind and stable people. They were really into taekwondo as a family at the time, and that was my introduction to martial arts. After that summer, I got really into judo, Shotokan, and boxing, and ended up joining the wrestling team. I don’t think I would’ve gone down the more athletic path if I hadn’t had that summer. Uncle Dewayne is a huge teddy-bear of a man, but extremely masculine. I remember several conversations we had where I talked about some of my issues. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but it was helpful. I think I was only there five or six weeks, but it was a very memorable experience, and I came home on a different track.

I’ve had a lot of little conversations like this with my aunts and uncles, and they helped me understand my parents better and become much more sympathetic to why they did some of the things they did.

Now, these are some of the best-case scenarios. I know they can also be very destructive.

I’ve had to shield my children from their uncle. Wayne’s drug use changed who he was, and while I know he loved his nieces and nephews, I couldn’t allow that influence in their lives. So I’m talking here about situations where there is a relatively healthy relationship.

Now, what does this have to do with single people and the childless? I think in a strong local community, they can function like aunts and uncles. For example, Patrick Hart is a close family friend, and my kids, especially my boys, think of him like an uncle. He didn’t get married until a little later in life, but he still has access to an extended family in the sense of my children. He’s the kind of man I want around my kids. He’s the kind of guy I know would respectfully disagree with me and yet be careful not to undermine my relationship with them, while also being a good check on me.

I write a lot about family. I think a lot about children, and grandchildren. It’s one of my driving motivations. I’m not going to stop talking about it. But I’m also aware this is a deep pain for some people who really want to be married or really want to have children, and it hasn’t worked out. I want you to know you can occupy a very unique place in the life of a church, especially in the lives of teens. You can be that adjacent authority figure, like a godly aunt or uncle. You can help guide kids back into the fold during those tumultuous, hormonal years. And as we do our best to rebuild the normality of the extended family, we can lean on the body of Christ as an imperfect but powerful supplement to the natural family.

I have more thoughts on this, but I need to sit with them and develop them better. But to all you spiritual aunts and uncles out there, I salute you. Thank you for your service. You’ve been a blessing to me. You’ve been a blessing to my children. And you are a blessing to the body of Christ. We don’t always get to decide how we serve the Lord, but there is always a blessing in the service He gives to us.