Family is a funny thing.
Our reunions are filled with secrets and tears, with shared traits and laughter, with too much good food and too little time.
It’s a blessing, I think, to go to a place with none of the outside world near. “Isolation” is whispered by the trees that cluster along three and a half miles of gravel road. We’re the only people here and we’ve got no internet – and no phone service for At&t customers. A recent and nearby Verizon tower does not leave us utterly technology desolate.
Therefore, we have no default internet to run to. One is forced to demise some other way to pass the time – perhaps conversation?
Family. These are the people we love – the people you can fight with and gripe with. You cry in the kitchen together, clinging tightly to each other – the only tangible thread of hope and of God that can be found sometimes.
You talk in hushed and hot whispers of your heartaches. Reflief is found only in a thin straw of a second chance.
You realize that you never knew the half of it before – you never realized the craggy rifts carved up – the loneliness, the hurt. You never realized what your child eyes had hidden.
You also realize how easily you can love a child. Hot breath on my cheek and h heavy head on my shoulder. Sweet, soft hands tugging on shirts, grasping a finger to climb the stairs.
My heart aches for all that could be but is not.
Yet… Gratitude resonates in my bones – God has blessed us with so much. Slow afternoons filled with relaxation and good conversations, evenings with singing – with interspersed “kiddie” songs (where the adults sing louder than the children even!). The The richness fo sharing a talbe, of holding hands to pray, of the gentle hand of Grandpa on your shoulder. The bittersweetness of remembering Grandma – through photographs and shared memories – and of teaching her name to little ones who never knew her. Knowing that she looks down on us along with our loving Father. Knowing that both she and we are safe in the arms of Jesus.”
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