The Background

I have a sister who is several years older than me and left home when I was 11 years old. She was a teenager and I was just a kid. We had nothing in common except the mother that we shared. We never really had a chance to bond like most sisters do. We shared a room, but not our lives. We're still not close today, though we do try to find things we share in common. My older brothers weren't around for very long either. One went home to live with his mom when he was 14, and the other left at 18. The first one has not been around since. My third brother left home when I was 13, going off to college. I remember the day he left. My mom had taken me to the mall to get my ears pierced for my 13th birthday. She thought the tears were for the pain of the punch. I looked up during lunch and just said, "He's gone too." My final chance at a family had just walked out the door and left me for good.

So, as my daughter turns 13, I was thinking of myself at around that age. I had 2 married siblings, one in college, and the first grandson, my nephew, died unexpectedly at birth on my brother's wedding day. My parents were going through a lot of grief and shock at that time. I remember telling my teacher some of the things I was feeling, and she said something like, "oh, my that's terrible" and that was it. There were no social workers back then to help kids in obvious emotional need. Thank God that has changed for the kids in our school today. I never approached my parents with my thoughts because they appeared to have enough to deal with at the time. I chose to just "be good" and stay out of the spotlight. I decided I had to be "the good kid", never making the mistakes that would tear my parents apart or make my mom cry.

I was a sad little girl in a tight cocoon for a very long time. Inside I had ideas of what "family" meant. Unfortunately, it was the Brady Bunch! Divorced, of course, but no one seemed to notice that at the time! It's not that I didn't have siblings. We just grew up very separately, making it seem as though I was an only child. Weird, I know. You don't miss what you don't have, so had I been an only child, I think I would be just fine today. I think it's like having your nose pressed up against the glass, seeing what you could have, and knowing it's not yours to have at all. Whether it was the divorce situation or just the age differences doesn't really matter. It's just the way the dynamics were back then and the way I processed it was probably the reason I struggled with it for so long.

A that young age, I processed it as rejection. That's a pretty significant and powerful emotion for a kid not equipped to handle that. I bottled it up inside, never expressing what it was that was bothering me. You have to understand that there were things going on around me that I had no understanding of at all. I became the invisible child, running off at the first sign of distress, escaping into my books and my quiet room. Things were not explained to me. They thought I was too young to understand. I cried for a whole day at school, thinking my dad was going to die. He had gone through back surgery, lost a great deal of weight and looked like death. Everyone seemed worried. I just shut my mouth. The day I spent crying was a school day. The teacher, thinking I was being overly sensitive about something else, made me read an entire chapter aloud to the class. I was sniffling, siphoning, and sobbing as I read. I rode the bus home that day with a sick headache, feeling less than an inch tall.

When I see my daughters, well-adjusted,happy, smart, talented, kind, loving, thoughtful and positive, I just can't believe it. They are the closest of sisters, just like I'd always imagined before we even had them! All I said was, "I want them close in age so they can grow up together." I'm thankful that God honored that all-important request for me. Because he took me down all those painful roads, I was able to overcome. Sure, there are scars, but God heals them all in His perfect timing.

The light at the end of my tunnel is being the mother of these girls. They are my saving grace. They are the family I always wanted, needed, and dreamed of. Don't misunderstand. I love my extended family today. God put us all together for a reason. I don't blame them or hold unforgiveness toward any of them. I do believe it's worth sharing in order to work through some of the things that plague me today. There is always room for healing. And there is always room for more pain.