Sharing family stories is one way to increase the strength of the intimate bond between you and the loved one for whom you are caring. This is important because there can be much tension in this relationship.
In this article, I will give you some personal examples of shared, emotional stories in our family. Perhaps they will give you some ideas of family stories you can share with your loved one. I also have written an article about writing your loved one’s life story.
Regarding family stories, for example, my dad once was visiting me when I was studying at the University of Florida campus, where there were 40,000 students. He walked up to the first student he saw and asked him for the dorm in which he could find me. Dad lived in a small town. and had an exaggerated assessment of my fame.
I often tried to get dad to improve his diet by nagging him to limit the foods in his diet that had a large amounts of sugar, salt, and fat. One day he became frustrated with me and yelled, “If it tastes good, I have to spit it out!
I was the oldest child, and Dave, one of my younger brothers, as a teenager, was starting to challenge my athletic superiority to him. One day, I arrogantly said I would have a swimming race with him, and I would give him a head start. After his head start, I dove in and swam hard to overtake him, with no success. After he won the race, he showed me the swim fins that he had snuck into the water and had used to beat me.
My other younger brother, Bill, and I once were traveling fifty miles from his house to mine. We stopped along the way at a fast-food restaurant for a quick snack and then continued on to my house. At my house we immediately had a larger meal.
Fairly quickly, we had some stomach problems and both of us threw up. Bill did not want to say that we had picked up the offending stomach problem at my house because of the lack of my bachelor cooking skills. I thought, with relief, that he thought we had picked up the stomach problem at the fast-food restaurant. That hope was dashed when, for the first time in his life, he offered to pay for both of us at a restaurant for our next meal.
In this article, I have attempted to describe humorous times in our family. There is no reason, however, for you not to describe a broader spectrum of family emotions in your family stories. The important outcome of such stories is to bond you and your loved one.
Psalm 133:1 reads, “Look at how good and pleasing it is when families live together as one. ”
Have you ever shared family stories with your loved one?
