I usually find myself writing about any number of funny silly things that my sweet kids are doing, but today I want you *who ever you are* to know that without pain there is no real deep belly laughs, no tight hugs that you wish wouldn’t end, no excitement to see someone again. Hurt and pain at this stage of my life is not like it used to be. Those two things used to be intimate friends and I was reminded of that this week, when someone said some hurtful things to me. I will not absorb them, I will not see them or hear that stuff as truth, but I will allow them to help me recognize where I am and as a tool to share where anyone can be. I love my life, I have it all, a husband who love me,dare I say likes me even now. That hasn’t always been a truth in my life. I have 6 great children who love me, but I am proud to say usually don’t like me, and I am ok with that. I have a mother who doesn’t always get me or seem to even have shared the same life as me at times because our perspective on the pain is so different, but she does love me, I believe that today, maybe at this point we are beginning to like each-other…. I hope. I have a father I hope loves me, I am not sure, and I am okay with that. I have grandparents who adore me, I mean when I talk to them or see them, or even think of them, I feel adored, loved, valued….everyone needs that, I wish everyone had it. That love has kept me alive at times.
But let me tell you about my aunts….they are different, there love is not the same, and their pain and experiences in life, both there on and the one that they have shared with me have been different and through that I am realizing who I am. I believe that women find them selves often in the women in their life. I am blessed. I have great women to identify with. I have four aunts who have had a lot of stink and a lot of love. Sometimes the pain they have experienced and the hurt they have known haunts me, knowing that their history is a shared history, my history.My grandmother (s), my aunts my mother, these women, their joys and pains, losses and gains they are intricately woven into who I am, even when I am not aware. As I really learn these women, know them as more than my caretakers I realize how generations’ past joys and pains and losses become part of us. These expieriences good and not so good change the people who will be a part of growing us up, either by their presence or absence (both are a huge part of who we are). These pieces will make a whole that becomes both who we are in width and depth. Knowing them,being allowed by each of them in various ways to see their hearts, their great big hearts and spirits, even at a distant glimpse and seeing their joys and pains make me whole, more whole everyday. I learn physicall and emotionally the things I need to know to grow into myself as I get older. Knowing these things helps me know why I choose what I do, why my parents chose eachother, and then chose not to choose me, I understand why my grandparents chose somethings and not others….I understand why my Aunts, my sweet wonderful, kind aunts who have not left me to feel like an orphan continue to choose me. I realize why my cousins (all those boys) choose their on lives and I love them more. Our history is one of choosing each-other in this family,taking care of one another, in spite of pain. With our choices to love even when we don’t agree, to stand by, to take care of eachother, because that is what family is supposed to do we are given a legacy of hope. My grandparents chose Joy and Hope instead of dwelling on pain of loss, something they both lived deeply at a young age. Thank you. They love me though as one of their on, even though they didn’t have to they chose me, they didn’t let me slip away. Their history would have been mine even if I had never had this family choose to follow me wherever I went to hang on to me when I was to young to hang on to them , and then later when I tried to push them away, but they chose me and wouldn’t let me go. That is how family with a deep history works, they choose back their on, even when there is pain. There is always pain, but the joy, the long hugs, the sweet feeling of being wanted, really wanted eventually with the love of people like these outweighs the pain, hopefully not just mine, but theirs too. I am thankful for our history, even the pain.
I Peter 1:6-7
6In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
This entry was posted on Friday, November 16th, 2007 at 8:58 am and is
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