We Are Family

This post is a part of the Five Minute Friday link up. We write for just 5 minutes on a 1-word prompt without heavy editing, and see what happens. Today’s prompt is “hospitality.”

Once upon a time I took a spiritual gifts test which determined that I had the gifts of administration and hospitality. Being fairly young in my journey with Jesus, I didn’t completely know what that meant, but I did know that I was pretty organized and good at keeping things going, and that I liked to be with people.

Is that all there was to it?

As the years have gone by, my home has become one in which people like to gather. It’s not huge, it’s not fancy, it’s not even all that clean (I had a friend describe it as clean enough to be healthy and dirty enough to be happy), but people are welcome and they know it.

Every Christmas we have a huge gathering of friends for Christmas dinner. At last count we were at 50-something, I think. I have people call and say, “We don’t have plans, can we come to your place?” Even when the number seems overwhelming, nobody is turned away. Most of us have moved far from our family of origin, so our friends have become that family to us.

Every time that I think about maybe scaling back and tightening our circle, I look around at the faces and there’s not a one I would consider losing. How do you purposefully cut off a hand or a foot?

And so we continue setting tables on the back porch, thankful for the mild December weather in Florida, and rejoice in the bounty of our friendships.

 

Family Treasures

This post is a part of my 10-Minutes Tuesday collection, written today on the prompt “family.”

We found out I was pregnant after 4 years of infertility treatment right around if not on Father’s Day itself. How ironic and sweet is that?

15 weeks later, after we thought we were safe and had told our friends, we discovered that our baby had not made it past about 6 weeks. I didn’t have any sign of miscarriage until that day.

Not knowing whether we would ever be able to grow our biological family was crushing to us. But now, as I sit here and write this, I gaze upon the pictures and portraits of our 3 kids that grace the walls, shelves and pretty much every horizontal surface of our home.

Now almost 22, 19 and 16, my kids are my treasure. The thought of them ever moving far away from me where I won’t see them frequently squeezes my heart, and even more so now that I also have a grandson that I care for 5 days a week. But I know I’m one of the lucky ones.

I myself moved across the country from my own family of origin. My parents have passed away and my sisters live in Colorado and Washington State, and my brother is still in California where we grew up. I don’t see them nearly often enough.

Family is a complicated, hard, beautiful thing. We can either thrive or flounder in our relationships with those we should hold most dear. Just a few years ago, my husband’s sister and her family moved from Texas to Florida, to a house right across the street from us. Just this week, that sister and her husband signed divorce papers after more than 30 years of marriage.

She doesn’t live across the street from us anymore, but her husband, 15-year-old son, and 27-year-old son who is about to get married, do. We value these last 3 years with them so close by. It means the world to me to be able to see them and know them and be there for them, especially during this hard time. My father-in-law is far away. But my mother-in-law lives with us. See what I mean? Complicated.

Many people complain about Facebook, but I’m thankful for it because of the connection it has given me to my faraway family. I can see pictures of my great nephew and great niece that I’ve never met, and know that my oldest sister is loving being Mimi to her new granddaughter. I long for my grandson and her granddaughter to meet. They would be super good friends. They are 2 months apart.

But for now, we treasure our family both far and near. Keep up as well as possible, and build an extended frie-maly here. You know, friends who are like family. They mean the world to us too!

With the holidays right around the corner, I know many people will be facing family situations that will be uncomfortable, hard, ugly even. I pray that you can find peace and maybe even that some relationships can be repaired.

Fun or Torture?

The activity my husband most likes to participate in on any holiday is a family bike ride. He’s a big cyclist himself, so he wants everyone to enjoy his passion. That’s completely understandable. And I would enjoy it myself if it wasn’t for that pesky part of the equation: the family.

None of our kids have taken as strongly to cycling as David has. One in particular, who shall remain nameless, spends a great deal of the time complaining about one thing or another, or just basically being unhappy. Uncomfortable on a bike, this child won’t take a hand off the handle bars to scratch an itch, or adjust a helmet, or even switch gears. Therefore, whenever one of the first two activities needs to happen, we have to come to a complete stop. And because this child won’t let go even enough to change gears, little legs have to pedal twice as much as bigger ones.

It’s common knowledge that, in order to feel comfortable doing something, you have to keep doing it. You’re not going to get comfortable unless you keep at it. If you only ride once every couple of months, you’re not going to get comfortable, and every street crossing or obstacle in the path is going to throw you for a loop.

So what was supposed to be a nice family bike ride to run some errands on this holiday turned into one part of the family way up ahead while the other part of us trailed behind, keeping pace with the slow-goer.

Rather than lose my patience, I should have been more kind. We all are not the same, nor do we have the same abilities. Though the whining didn’t need to be tolerated, I think this child would have responded better to compassion and to the encouragement of the family, rather than the scorn.

“Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. . . But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as He wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you!’ And the head cannot say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you!’ On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. . . But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it” (1 Cor. 12:14-26).

Thankful today for:

583. a holiday with no grading to do!

584. my daughter’s clean room

585. vacuum cleaners

586. Jasper becoming more vocal