The real title for this article was too long to put in the title space. Here it is:
How to handle far away relationships in an ultra-connected world in a way that doesn’t drive you crazy and burned out, but allows you to flourish in your place of calling and bloom where you have been planted.
We live in an ultra-connected world. While the consequences of such connectivity to technology on certain cancers are still pending study, studies have already shown that stress and anxiety, poor focus/concentration are among the many daily consequences of being over-connected.
Back in the day when there were no telephones, no internet, etc., when a person, say, lived in a different state or abroad for work, he would generally not connect with relatives until they went back home to visit family and friends during the holidays. I remember my late uncle, Ni Sam, who used to visit during the Christmas and New Year holidays. One could write letters, but that was reserved for very urgent matters. In today’s world, with the internet, people living anywhere in the world can call, text, Skype you anytime. They can contact you on Facebook and other social media. People have come to expect that if you care about them, you would respond. If they call you and you don’t call back, they get offended. But I think that if one desired to stay in such constant connection, even with family members, it would make it difficult to do any work in the area God has called them.
Many people today do not work or live in the same city or village they grew up in. In the U.S. and Europe, many people live and work in different states. It’s quite common for people to live hundreds of miles away from their parents and siblings. In fact, many westerners work outside of their countries.
There are also people like myself who are emigrants from another country. Being an immigrant means you may have your parents, siblings, and old friends in your country of birth. Many immigrants who have moved settle in communities that become their new homes. In these new communities, they have jobs, attend churches, and other civic events. Their children live and go to school there. Building relationships with people with whom they work, go to church, go to school, and send their children to the same school becomes paramount.
Yet, there is always the tug, tension, and draw of the relationships back in one’s community of origin. For many Africans living abroad, for example, their family members look up to them for financial support and other types of help. Such family members are sometimes doubly motivated by their need for help, and their fraternal love to stay connected. They would like to text and talk with you weekly or monthly if they could. They mean well, need help, and don’t want to seem to ask for help without first staying in touch and cultivating a relationship as that might appear that all they care about is the money. Yet, the truth is that if they had the money or opportunities to make it and were busy doing so, they would be less available to talk with you. You would probably do the same things if you were in their shoes.
For example, I know an African friend who is also a physician like me. He has a family with five children, all under the age of ten. His physician work often requires him to work fifty to sixty hours a week. In addition to that, he runs and ministry that helps orphans, develops leaders, and teaches the gospels. He feels this is something God has called his family to do. He takes classes to help him serve better in his work as a physician and his ministry and often teaches as part of his ministry. Often, when he is at work, friends and family members from Africa call since there is a time difference of several hours. His job requires adequate rest and focus on serving patients well. Many expect him to join several WhatsApp groups e.g., want to continually be in touch with his siblings that are in Africa, another to stay in touch with his wife’s family and their siblings, and another participate in a village meeting with people from the village he lived in over 20 years ago. There are also other memberships that are expected in the U.S, e.g., to pay dues and participate at the city, state, and national level groups of emigrants to the U.S. All these are separate meetings with separate responsibilities. The list of expectations is endless. Parents, siblings, and friends expect consistent communication. Because they have both the time and motivation in their lives to want to communicate, as humans, they tend to judge how you should act through the lens of their own paradigm. They cannot feel the pain and stress that the immigrant doctor feels.
Many people, of all races, find themselves stretched thin and overwhelmed just as this immigrant physician. This is not a problem limited to African emigrants but a global problem that is aggravated by easy connectivity and the expectations people have come to have. It’s also in part caused by a lack of occupation by some relatives. For example, if everyone kept themselves occupied, they would appreciate less frequent involvement in the activities that their lack of employment has gotten them into.
If you are one of these people who are living away from your place of birth and have a new community that you must engage and become fully involved to live life to the fullest. What should you do?
Personal Boundaries: 3 Months Per Year to Connect with Far-Away Loved Ones
I would advise you to do the following, which you may adapt to suit your specific circumstances.
Set boundaries and create a rule of life for the purpose of increasing focus, creating time to spend with God and with your spouse and children, reducing being overstretched, etc., so that you can serve God to the best of your ability. Simplicity (minimalism) as a spiritual discipline is not merely good when it comes to material things but also applies to relationships. It’s better to have a few deep relationships than many superficial ones.
If you live your life to try to meet the endless expectations of friends and family, you will waste the gift that God has given you. And when you stand before God, you will be the only one who has to give an account. You must accept the fact that they may never understand your boundaries or accept them graciously. You cannot blame or be angry with them. What people see depends on where they are positioned. All of us can only see through the glasses that we are wearing. Your experience and formation have given you a set of glasses that your family and relatives who are not living in your area and doing your kind of work will never understand. That’s not because you are a better human being than them. It’s simply because the path God has brought you through has formed you differently.
Just because you were born in a particular village, city, or country, does not mean that you belong there or should always return there. Those people and places should have a special place in your heart, and you should seek to bless them when you can. However, you have to follow your calling. Abraham had to leave his own land and country and follow God to inherit a land that he did not know. That land became his land and his country. Where God has called you, where you live, is your new community. Settle there. Work and pray for the peace and prosperity of that new city because if it prospers, you too will prosper. If God ever calls you back to return and inhabit the land of your birth, then fully commit to it. Live, die, and be buried where God has called you and where you live. Don’t live as a stranger in the land of your calling, working, and building houses “back home” where you may never live in.
Decide, for example, to focus on building relationships with people who live in your local community, where you can drive for less than 30 minutes and visit. They can drop off their children for your family to watch while they do something, and your family can do the same. If you need some help, you can call them, and they will be right there. If they also needed help, they can call you, and you would be right there. People with whom you can sit down and eat a meal and your children can play together. People with whom you can meet to study the Bible, pray, and fellowship [I personally don’t want to pray on the phone]. These can be people through a local church, people with whom you work, people whose children go to the same school as yours, your neighbors in the same area, etc. Don’t worry about the people living in the community you used to live, unless you have been called there, that is God’s responsibility, not yours. Focus on what he has called you to do and where he has placed you and he will raise up people from within the place you emigrated from to care for that community or send someone from another country to do so. If you are like me whom he has called to serve orphans and young people in the place I emigrated from, do so gratefully and be focused on the task assigned to you.
I recommend that nine months out of the year, you shut down communication with anybody who either doesn’t live within 30 minutes of you or is directly jointly working with you on a project God has called you to do. I recommend keeping the months of November, December, and January of each year for visiting or talking on the phone with family members, relatives, friends, and acquaintances who live far away from you. This is unless you have something within your line of work or calling that you are working on with that person. In that case, you would communicate year-round as needed to get the project done. People who could get year-round access to you may include:
- Family members, friends, acquaintances who live within a 30-minute drive.
- Team-members working with you on a daily basis in your primary area of work.
- Your clients/patients/customers, etc. during assigned and scheduled times at work. These are the people you are called to serve. You would have to give an account to God on how you served them.
- Partners who are working with me through a ministry you lead, if you are like the immigrant doctor described above who leads a ministry that serves orphans.
- Your teachers, mentors, and coaches who are helping you grow.
- Your students, mentees, and other people you are teaching or developing so that they can go out and serve God in their areas of calling.
I know that family members who live in another state or another country would see the birth of a new baby as something to text you and let you know. If you don’t have the kind of relationship that your need to go and see the baby within weeks, I think it can wait till when you connect during the three months in November, December, and January. They would like to tell you when some distant relative is sick or dies. While that is good to know, it can wait till the next November, December, and January.
Your own mother might want to talk with you weekly. If you think she absolutely needs to be closely involved with you, bring her to live near you if you can. Otherwise, do you have siblings living in the community or country where your mother lives hundreds or thousands of miles away? Then they should be in charge of connecting with her more closely and not you who are hundreds or thousands of miles away. There is a good chance that visiting her for thanksgiving or connecting with her three months a year would be enough. Remember that before this age of connectivity, people who traveled away or abroad never saw the family they left behind on a yearly basis.
I know that some of your loved ones, friends, old classmates, etc., who have more time and energy on their hands to communicate with people year-round who live around the world may not be able to understand why one would seek to set such boundaries that they may perceive as strict and perhaps even unloving. But as they say, if you are not in a person’s shoes, you cannot know the pinch that he gets wearing them.
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