The Gift of a Sibling

While back in Minnesota for my dad's memorial service, I overheard my oldest son inform people that he and his wife were expecting their second baby in October. This announcement was followed by comments about how good this would be for their firstborn child.

"He will have a live-in playmate."

"He will learn how to share."

"Your older son won't grow up spoiled."

"He will learn to interact with other children."

A sibling plays an important role in shaping who we are. In the United States, 80% of us have siblings. In fact, growing up in America today, a child is more likely to have a sibling, than a father.

I have an older brother and two younger sisters. We played, we fought, we created make-believe worlds, and we were our own best friends and worst enemies. One of my most vivid childhood memories occurred when my brother and I were deemed responsible enough to babysit our two younger sisters. When we announced it was bedtime, our sisters wouldn't listen to us, so my brother dragged them upstairs to their room. By their feet.

In spite of our squabbling, we knew we would be seeing our siblings at the dinner table at the end of the day, and somehow we better learn to get along. Plus we all shared one bathroom - a reality that taught us important negotiating skills.

It is my personal belief that a sibling is one of the greatest gifts we give our children. And most people when they read that statement will think of the young years--of that shared bathroom, and making homemade Barbie-doll clothes and washing the 4-H lambs in an old used bathtub in the middle of the alfalfa field and cooking blue-ribbon chocolate cake in a humid August kitchen with a box fan running in the corner and sitting in a tire swing reading books checked out at the public library and playing hide-and-seek all over the neighborhood, with nobody wondering where we were cuz we knew when to come home for supper.

But nobody tells you how good it is to have a sibling on the other end of things, when you have aging parents and you have face one of life's biggest challenges - losing a parent,

and what an absolute relief it is to have someone else sitting by your father's bedside, sharing the burden.

Nobody tells you this, but it is true.

And although my husband was there and my kids and their spouses and various nieces and nephews and countless friends, it was with my siblings that I shared the longest history and the most stories of my dad--of him reading us the comics as we surrounded his chair in the living room every Sunday after church where we each sang in the choir and after we had a roast beef dinner using the good dishes on the dining room table, and of my dad teaching us to stand on our heads on the worn carpet in front of the black and white television, and of summer camping trips and a long trip one summer to Disneyland and my dad's snowmobile accident when Dad hit a barbed wire fence at 45 mph and needed 3 layers of 57 stitches to put him back together,

and there in the bloody snow, my dad discovered Jesus.

I share these stories with my siblings. We are the keepers of these memories.

So when I hear my son say that his wife is expecting and our grandson will soon have a sibling, I think of the stories they will one day share whispered under covers when the lights are out and around campfires and in the backseat on their own adventures and to their children when they are asked, "Tell me a story of when you were little,"

and I think of that brother-sister bond and believe it is a good thing.

A very good thing.

Today,

on your journey of faith,

I pray you remember the stories

that have brought you to this point

and you can find reasons

to be thankful.