Aunts often get a bad press. In the novels of the great PG Wodehouse, they are always battle-axes bringing little but destruction to their nephew’s lives.
In contrast, I enjoy the company of my three lovely biological aunts, and, until this week, one beautiful honorary aunt called Ruth.
Ruth died, in Christ, as a single woman, aged 81. She would have loved to have married and have kids. She spent much of her adult life struggling with acute back pain, unable to do a lot of what she’d like to have done. But there was not a hint of bitterness about her, just an increasingly radiant love of Jesus and a ministry of prayer and friendship that she offered so many.
I adopted her as my honorary aunt fifteen years ago after a hilarious conversation in which she questioned whether people would think it was appropriate for me to give her so many lifts to and from church meetings. I had not yet told people about my sexuality so we couldn’t use that as cover, instead I suggested that if she was known to be my honorary aunt that would make it all right for any Billy Graham rule sticklers.1 She accepted the role and it morphed from a half joke into a spiritual reality.
Ruth prayed for me so much that I slightly fear life and ministry without her prayer support. She was always honest with me about the ups and downs of life, whether that was her past, the present, or her fears for the future. We talked about singleness and childlessness often – she got the pain, knew the moments that were most difficult and the things that helped. We got into the habit of spending the evening of Christmas Eve together, eating a meal, sharing bread and wine, helping each other through one of the more difficult seasons of the single person’s year. Conversations during the long loneliness of Covid lockdowns were special because she got what it was like when you lived alone. Time together was precious whether we were visiting places important to her, meeting each other’s family and friends, or just talking and praying.
She treated me not just as a brother in Christ, but as an honorary nephew in her constant love and care for me.
But why this tribute to her here? Well, she was a great supporter of Living Out – not due to her sexuality (she wasn’t same-sex attracted), or her singleness (though she loved what we wrote into that), but simply because she loved me, and backed me with her prayers and encouragement in all that I did. She treated me not just as a brother in Christ, but as an honorary nephew in her constant love and care for me.
And so I write this piece simply to recommend the practice of appointing honorary aunts/ uncles/nephews/nieces – an older or younger sister or brother in Christ who God has connected you to and whose importance in your life you want to acknowledge to them and others. It will do you both good to slightly formalise your relationship and benefit from each other’s company, not to be nervous of starting to share the sort of information and times that good family members would instinctively share with each other.
Something I didn’t share with Ruth is her love of skiing. The risk averse part of me hates the idea, but I have promised Ruth a skiing-trip in the new heavens and the new earth. It will be an appropriate thank you for all she did to enrich my life in the here and now.
If you haven’t yet had someone like Ruth in your life, get praying, and adopt an aunt soon.
- The American evangelist famously avoided being alone with any woman apart from his wife. He had his own good reasons for this, but it has become one of the many extra-biblical rules of evangelicalism.
