You want to make everything special for the family. You spend several days preparing the menu, assembling the ingredients, making sure the house is ready to receive your guests, your beloved family. They are, after all, your closest and most important relationships, the people you live to serve.
The preparations all done, and the meal ready to come out of the oven, you double-check to make sure everything is ready to receive the family as they arrive. You are so excited to see them!
[✔] The nice placemats are out.
[✔] Bathrooms are clean and the guest towels are on display.
[✔] The carefully prepared menu has you ready to eat.
[✔] You put on some nice music and dim the lights.
[✔] You are confident the family will enjoy the meal.
…but mealtime comes, and goes…
A lot of the family members don’t show up; no call, no text, no reason. They just don’t show. You are so disappointed, because you wanted to serve them the special meal you had spent days planning and preparing, and they just didn’t show up… didn’t care enough to make any effort. You have prepared to feed an army, so you feed the few family members who arrived, and put on your it’s-fine-and-I-am-not-disappointed face, because you have practiced it so well. This, of course, is not the first meal you have prepared with excitement, wanting to bless your family, only to have them not show up, with no call, and no explanation.
You suck it up and draw upon your glass half full optimism, making mental excuses for the no-shows. Some of them were probably sick, you imagine, and just forgot to let me know. They must have had to work. Maybe they were unexpectedly called out of town — that could have happened. You imagine all sorts of plausible reasons for the no-shows, because it is far too painful to imagine that the family would just not show up without good reason, after all the costly, time-intensive preparations you have made just to feed them with your very best. The social media posts start appearing, mocking your optimism. They were not sick, or working, or traveling; they just didn’t want to come and eat what you had so carefully prepared.
But you are a slow learner. You will gather the ingredients, select your best recipe, clean the house, and pour all the love you can muster into preparing another grand feast to which you will invite the family and their friends to enjoy next week, knowing as you work that your heart will take another hit, and another… and another.