Family Ties
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| No words can express! |
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| Discovering their Viking heretage, fighting Trolls. |
As a family, we have been here at Disney World for about a
week having fun.
Grandparents, parents
and children all sharing and expressing themselves.
I have to say though, these will be some of
the special times that our children will recall when growing up, and look back
at with fondness and joy far into adulthood.
They will be times that we, as parents too will also treasure.
I have to say that I love-watching people in places such as Disney
World. I see parents and grandparents becoming children
once again with their little ones, sharing the same experiences, all having the
time of their lives. On the other hand
it saddens my heart to also see families so very fractured, not by the events
happening around them, but by what their lives are summed up to be in spite of
the joy and happiness in their midst.
For some, they have hopes of mending broken relationships by coming
here, for others, having dreams of sharing special experiences for the first
time.
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| Our family sitting on a stone wall, looking up to heavens and sharing memories. |
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| Meeting a gentle, kind and gracious hero. |
This is truly a place where dreams can come true, but it is
also a place that can expose our lives as well.
I have seen parents and children yelling at each other, parents hitting
their children, with both parent and child sighing in complete exhaustion, and
even crying.
Why?
I don’t know all the whys; but I do know that
the life that we lead before coming here will not change when arriving, it will
only be intensified.
If families that
are well connected and have a wholesome love and respect for one another before arriving, will also reveal this as well.
If
on the other hand, families that do not have these things before coming, the
result will only intensify as to what was there before setting foot into the
park.
Can problems arise even in the best of relationships here at
Disney?
Of course they can and do.
But, it is not in having the absence of problems,
but in how we handle them, together.
Car
manufacturers put their products under extreme stress conditions before
introducing the final product to the public.
These events of extreme duress, reveal to them where the cracks and weak
points are.
They then are able to
reinforce these points of weakness, and produce a safe automobile for the
public.
For our families, being in
crowds numbering sometimes in the thousands can also be very stressful, but
they also reveal to us the areas that need improving as well.
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| A princess wanted to meet the older brother as well. |
Last night when coming home on the bus I saw something that
I had never seen before.
Almost everyone
in front of me had a cell phone in his or her hand, and was either playing a
game on it or texting someone.
No one
was talking to each other!
They each
were in their own worlds sitting next to one another and not sharing their joys, or for that matter, disappointments of the day.
Are we coming to a world that is so fractured that we cannot communicate
with the person next to us?
Anne noticed
before going into the Princess Dinner at the Norwegian restaurant, a family of 17
all waiting in line, either playing on their cells or texting, even grandma was
playing a game on her cell.
No one was
talking to each other!
Electronic
devices are a wonderful tool, but are they revealing to us how fractured some
of our families have become?
Obviously, they are
not the cause, but only the symptom.
Does putting the cellphones down change our relationships, obviously not
in the beginning, but it is a start to making positive changes.
Our relationships with our family and friends
are very precious, we can’t let them go and not pay a price.
Places like Disney are not places to discover
happiness; they are places to share happiness.
It is not in the event that brings joy and connectedness one to another,
it is the time that we invest with one another.
Some of my most precious memories are not in places that are full of
elaborate entertainment, but in a simple sandbox playing with our children, or
on a crowded Disney bus.
Sitting there,
listening to them share with you their dreams, concerns, and joys are memories one will never forget.
