Centered in the Family

Happy anniversary. It is good to celebrate the passage of time and look back at an organization or family’s beginnings to see the struggles, the false starts, the eventual successes won over time. With this in mind, the Family Center in East St. Louis marked its 10th year of community and hope with the many people who have contributed to its growth and stability over these last 10 years. Why should we care? Why should we hail the Family Center’s success?

The Family Center brings together people of many different backgrounds, different age groups and from different sides of the Mississippi River — east and west — to form, foster and bind people together as family. It’s not always easy to be a family even when we’re related to one another by blood. Sometimes, I suspect, it’s easier if we aren’t. At the Family Center, people have willingly bound themselves together for the good of families, and, in many cases, it turns out, for their own good as well.

I have sometimes said it is dangerous to be called “friend” by Joe Hubbard, head of Catholic Urban Programs because you may be asked to do something you weren’t expecting to do, or being present in places you never dreamed possible and at times that were not always convenient. The experience was always, always worth the cost of the friendship, but it just isn’t always easy. Being called “friend” by Sister Carol Lehmkuhl, OP, head of the Family Center, can sometimes be described in the same way. Sister Carol calls and presents an opportunity for spiritual or personal growth at times that don’t always fit neatly into a schedule, but again, these opportunities can never be missed. She has the uncanny ability to bring people — singly or in groups — together who might never otherwise cross paths.

When the Family Center celebrated its anniversary, these groups came together, first at the Lord’s table, to pray, to reflect, to say thank you. Families now own their own homes because of the efforts of so many people who joined the “family” for a short while to build a home, to tutor a youngster, to teach a child to dance or to raise money and awareness for so many projects within the family.

The Family Center has passed its 10-year milestone, and people paused to reminisce, to say a few words about the past, and look to the future with anticipation and hope.