“The ties that bind are the eternal kind”

I am the oldest of three sisters. We were our mother’s joy and the reason for our father’s gray hair. We were especially bonded in love by our mother who reminded us, no matter the conflict or disagreement that loving one another was what really mattered and in the end would count the most.

Like most families, the laughter always outweighed the tears and the memories of special moments have been taken to legendary proportions for the grandchildren…the circle of love and life that only family love binds us eternally to.

I received a wonderful gift this past week from my sister, Debby, (affectionately called #2 by our Dad, he often referred to us by birth number rather than by name, that was the character he was). She invited me to travel with her to Highlands, North Carolina. There is nothing like visiting the Smokey Mountains this time of year, with its vibrant fall foliage and quaint roadside stands full of pumpkins and jams along back mountain roads.

Debby and I lost our husbands a year-and-a-half apart, my husband from cancer and her husband from a massive coronary. We lost both our parents two years apart before that. As children, Smokey Mountain vacations in the summers were a child’s dream come true. We LOVED them! Both Debby’s family and mine loved traveling to the mountains sometimes twice in a year. The hiking, the gem-mining, country cooking, the Blue Ridge Parkway drives and so much more are echoes of joyful, precious moments spent together.

To be together alone as sisters, without the earthly presence of parents or spouses, was for both of us a beginning.

It was a time to claim for ourselves a sisterhood that once again reflected back on a childhood past and yet, now rested on the wisdom of our adulthood and mutual respect. It for sure was an awakening to the “silence” in our lives that although God had called our father, mother and soul mates home, He certainly had something more for us to do. It seems as though a mandate from Heaven that our faith in the Creator be deepened in our resolve to serve, however that is to be.

But, I think what I came home with by and large from being with my sister this past week, is the echo of my mother’s words…”just love one another.” It is the tie that binds, it surpasses all space and time and it rests deep in our soul that in the end, it WILL BE all that matters!

Thank you Debby for the week of love and sharing!

It has been and continues to be a source of spiritual renewal and heavenly comfort.

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