Siblings are the unique set of people who can simultaneously reflect yourself back at you and shine a revealing light of contrast upon you.
Raised in the same household, within the same micro-culture of your unique family, siblings have a share in the most formative years and aspects of your life. Time spent with them as adults scours up reminiscences deep in the fabric of who you are, however distant the routines and adventures of childhood may now feel.
I recently got to spend a splendid week with my two sisters. This week with Ellen and Mollie was punctuated with such back-traveling exclamations as:
"Remember lying awake at night, too afraid to fall asleep in case there were burglars?" "Yeah, I'd listen for Dad's cracking ankles coming up the stairs so I knew it was him and not a robber!"
"We used to spend hours in the hay room playing with our kittens every spring!"
"Remember competing for who got to tell Mom about their day first when we got home from school? And we hated when you got to go first, because you'd go through every millisecond of your day: 'And then I reached for the green crayon, but Ellie got it first, so then I reached for the light green crayon and colored the grass...'"
In the times these things actually took place, they were just the stuff we Sundermeier girls did. Nighttime vigils dreading robbers were routine, the hay room was where we summered, standing in line for the school bus with one finger up to secure your place as "first to tell Mom" was informal ritual. Now, these things have taken on the sacred tinge of story—the story we were delightfully written into together.
But that week, I also got to see anew how starkly different we three "Greenwood Girls" are, and always have been.
Since siblings are made up of the same, intertwining fabric of nature and nurture, it is only once each has left the childhood home and one by one picked their new settings and plot points, that that which is innate and distinct about each sibling can be fully seen.
Popular, capable Ellen, loved and at home in all the spaces she's inhabited, is on her way to a third degree, and pouring herself into teaching and mentoring younger students along the way. It may be an oversimplification, but she carries with her a portion of our childhood days, since her future PhD in Children's Literature is like a very advanced version of the hours spent in her bedroom, reading Harry Potter and Anne of Green Gables aloud to her two younger siblings.
Quiet Mollie, who has always found pure joy and humor in the smallest of things, is settling into life in the convent, a life that prioritizes the simplest exterior things and aims at moving to a simpler and simpler interior life, until eternal joy with God is just a straight shot. Eighteen years of sharing a bathroom with us has certainly prepared her for community life, but also the relatively slow pace of life we were allowed to lead within a society that pushes for more activities and busier schedules, settled within her a desire for less, simpler, and higher.
And I, for whom home has perhaps always held the strongest place in my imagination, have alighted into another home with my husband and children, wherein we work and play and eat and sleep and think and have long conversations about what life can and ought to look like within the walls of our green house and within the fence of our (sometimes) green yard.
El: Professional. Intellectual. Driven. Teacher.
Mol: Pray-er. Ponderer. Peace-seeker. Sister.
Lil: Homemaker. Wife. Mother. Idealist.
Since the times of complaining that I kick in my sleep, my sisters have occupied the indispensable role of teaching me about myself. The gift of being together for a whole week also brought the gift of getting to see anew who God has created me to be, what role in the story He has prepared for me alone to take on, for only I can.
I'm so grateful for who Ellen is. I'm so grateful for who Mollie is. I'm so grateful for the old yellow house in Greenwood hidden by spirea and the parents who cultivated its every detail for our formation.
What treasured memories do you and your siblings share? How do the stories of your family, your siblings and your own, shed light on God's purpose for you? How can you cultivate space in your home for memories that will take on the sacred tinge of story in your children's futures?
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