The Family Portrait
My wife and I have run several small groups: youth, young married, singles, leaders, parents, perspective missionaries, and adults who feel they are overwhelmed with life. Oh, that last one is just us…never mind. Anyway, we love to do one particular small group exercise that unknowingly reveals a lot about each person in the group. We hand out a blank sheet of paper and have an insanely amount of crayons available to the group. We then announce the exercise by giving the following directions. “On this blank sheet of paper, and with these crayons we want you to draw a visual representation of your family, the family that you grew up in, your childhood family. Use creativity with color, size, spacial dimensions between people, location on the paper for each of your family members, lines connecting or broken or dividing to signify difficulty in the relationships. Circles can emphasize connection or separations.” We then let them create for a while. Once we gather them back we ask each of them to walk us through their creations of their family portrait. Telling us about their picture and why they chose color, space, size, etc. It never ceases to amaze me how powerful this exercise is in getting to some deep seeded issues regarding people’s childhood and current outlook on life. Many have confessed that they never realized the amount of space or power that one individual in their family possessed until they thought of how to draw them on the paper. We have seen small little figures in the corner representing themselves as forgotten, overlooked, and denied access to the interactions of the family. We have seen large overbearing figures representing controlling parental figures. The sizes, shapes, positions and connecting lines revel so much of the power, space and influence each person in the family had during the participant’s childhood.
While reading MaryKate Morse’s book Making Room For Leadership I was reminded of the above small group exercise and identified so well with how our bodies and personalities go into influencing, (for the good or the bad) other people around us. Each person doing the exercise not only drew on a paper the perceived power that they dealt with growing up, but like a canvas themselves they reflected the power that they were given or denied in the way they carried themselves to this day. Some made reference to the how their sibling was always the favored child who excelled while they were overlooked. They spoke as to how power had been given to that sibling because he or she had the “IT” factor and was often recognized. This “IT” factor can be explained in one’s presence and how they come across. This presence is the visual manifestation of power carried in the body that has an influencing effect on others in social settings.”[1]
Other’s in the group shared about the overbearing father who used his power, even physical power and space, to force his influence onto the weaker family members. All these “power plays” eventually worked themselves into the fabric of the next generation and often the cycle continues. Those with the “IT” factor succeed and get promoted and those without, do not. But as Dr. Morse writes, “If we are to be God’s influencers, we need to come to grips with the true role of power in our lives. If we are to incarnate the living presence of Christ, we must understand the combination of his power with our own.”[2] Having seen the effect of the bad use of power and space in my own life and in other people’s lives I want to make sure I understand this combination of Christ’s power and my power as I choose to lead people into greater relationship with our living Lord. It is our job as the ambassadors of Christ to lift up the weak and confront the manipulative power hunger leaders who would take advantage of others. In Christ eyes everyone has the “IT” factor for He has used his power to make His presence known to each of us that we might gain His power and authority in this world. May we therefore strive to paint new family portraits that reflects His love, mercy, grace, and truth that has so richly imprinted our lives.
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