It is comforting to know where and with whom we belong and discomforting to feel we do not belong. Belonging brings with it a sense of connectedness, purpose and relationship while not belonging gives us a sense of disconnectedness, lostness and loneliness. 

        Family

My dad was the one with whom I felt most connected to in my family. I was fully aware of all the other members, but Dad was the one who, in my mind, linked us all together as members of the same tribe. 

Without arrogance, he held the authoritative position in the family and because of him, I knew I belonged. I was a full fledged member of a family, known as the Macek family.  

Dad established and held the family together with two priorities. The number one rule was to respect Mom. The second rule was to honor God. Neither disrespect or dishonor were tolerated by Dad and we all understood that such things would bring his wrath down upon us. 

But when Dad ended his life, all hell broke loose in the family and the family, as I knew it, fell apart. His absence seemed to break my link with my family and with God. 

Yes, Mom was still alive, but she did not have the wherewithal to hold herself together, let alone her brood of children. And though I was still conscious of Dad’s basic tenets of respect and honor, no one held me accountable to such things anymore. It was as though I’d been hurled into outer space, destined to live without gravity or light for the rest of my life. 

I’ve since found my way back to belonging to my family and to God, but the journey was an arduous one.  

First, to find our way back to having that innate sense of belonging means we have to acknowledge our lostness, something no one wants to admit. Our private or shared disclosure to our disorientation will  humble us, but it also opens an awareness that there are others who can point us in the direction we need to go. 

For instance, the opportunity to connect once again with my family came with the invitation to join the Macek Maverick phone calls organized by one of my sisters. 

At first, I deleted the invitation from my email, but when another one of my sisters, the wise and gentle one, spoke to me about my decision to opt out of the calls, I changed my mind. Since then, I’ve given those family calls a chance and found that conversations with my siblings have healed the riffs between us. 

Finding my way back to God has included many tiny steps of faith. The first step was to believe that I needed to believe and now each step is a continuation of that first step of faith. 

Why bother knowing you already belong? When we discover that we already belong to our family and to God, then we detect the importance of connection.