Family

Family…a little word with so much packed into it. In that one word is all the love, protection, security, what’s-mine-is-yours, I’ll-fight-for-you-and-I know-you’ll-fight-for-me stuff a person could ever want or need. At the very same time, thoughts of family can conjure up more sadness, hurt, disappointment, and heartache than could ever happen anywhere else.
I know from 50+ years of experience that my hugest cheerleaders come from the group of people I call my family. I know, also from experience, that the people who can hurt me the deepest (or be hurt by me) come from that same exact group of people. I am sure God knew what He was doing when He created and ordained family (although I wondered about that more than once during the years of sharing a bedroom with younger sisters)….He knew if we could work out life there, we could do it anywhere. He knew that these would be ones whose love we would both cherish and stomp on in the same day. He knew that if we could learn to love these people while living in tight quarters with them, that we would somehow be better equipped for life in general. He knew that living with these people would be the perfect place to practice unconditional love, seventy-times-seven kind of forgiveness, unmerited grace, and goodness whether deserved or not.
So is that all family is…a training camp of sorts? I say NO! It’s that place where “for better or worse,” we dare to be ourselves while, at the same time, we are stretching to be better selves. It is the place where people see that “better self” long before it may appear in public. And in that place, the people who love us respond to us based on their love for us, not the way we treated them, what was withheld from them, or even how we ignored them while looking for love and attention elsewhere.
Family – my life is rich and meaningful because of mine, and I’m willing to bet that there are more treasures waiting to be discovered.

P.S. I wrote these words following a family reunion held a few weeks ago. It was attended by my two sisters (one on furlough from Latvia), one of my two brothers, our spouses, our kids and a couple of grandkids. It was all in honor of and especially for my mom.