I guess most sisters bicker as
they grow up. We have a tendency to be a tad jealous of each other. “How come
she gets to…” and later, “Why do all my boyfriends notice her?” Even later,
“Why doesn’t my husband treat me like hers treats her?” or “”Why are her kids
so well-behaved?”
My sister and I are six years
apart so by the time I entered my teens she was married. I felt a deep loss and
for a long time I felt the odd person out. She and my brother’s wife were
closer in age, so they bonded. They always huddled at family events. I felt the
pangs of exclusion like the wimpy little kid slumped on the sideline bench
whose muscles would never fill out his uniform.
Until my husband died suddenly
in the shower getting ready for work. Though five hours away, my sister dropped
her life and rushed to my aid. She boarded her animals at the vets, packed a
bag and drove to my door. I honestly cannot tell you how long she stayed with
me. Certainly until after the funeral five days later. Having lost her husband
a year previously, she guided my numbed mind and aching heart through the
planning, the visitations and the arrangements as I sniveled for days on in
overwhelmed by it all.
When I sold the house and moved
to a one bedroom apartment, all I could afford at the time, she returned. We
spent hours rubbing masking tape onto the floors mapping out where furniture
would go and plotting what I could bring and what I should leave behind for the
estate sale. She then monitored the estate sale like an award winning car salesman, raking in the bucks so I could
afford the moving company.
My brother, an attorney, drove
in to handle all the legal affairs pro bono without blinking an eye. All I had
to do was show up at the courthouse and swear my husband to be deceased—by far
my highest hurdle. Declaring him legally dead before a magistrate made it real,
too real. My brother stood by my side as my knees quaked. His even-toned
professionalism became my boulder. I watched, wide-eyed and tear-blinked as he
handed off paper after paper to the court clerk. Documents all identified by
letters and numbers which I never understood.
Growing up, my brother seemed a
phantom. Eleven years older than me, he was a teenager locked in his world by
the time I could toddle. Then came the college years away. When I was in third
grade, he walked down the aisle. After that, he moved away, had a child of his
own and built a life. Eventually I did the same. For decades we acknowledged
each other like shadows at family gatherings. But that day at the courthouse,
he became flesh and bone to me.
God purposes good from tragedy.
My husband’s passing brought me closer to my siblings and showed me what
family-bound love is all about. Five years later, we are able to communicate at
a deeper level, share our feelings openly, and be there for each other through
this rollercoaster called life. Now, that’s true love — a love akin to no other
on earth.
Check out Julie’s contribution to Prism Book Group’s new
Love Is series…
Greener Grasses
“Love does not envy…” 1 Corinthians: 13:4
Twin sisters, Erin and Ellen,
covet each other’s lives and husbands. Their festered envy has not only kept
them at arm’s length for almost two decades, it has placed both on a precipice
of divorce — something they’d never admit to each other.
Yet after two weeks together
with their spouses, as they sort through their mother’s belongings following
her funeral, they discover the flaws in their sibling’s “grass-greener” lives.
But will that revelation help each sister appreciate her own husband and
lifestyle as truly according to God’s plan? Or is it too late for a change of
heart?
