Written by Katie on February 8, 2022

Life is Full of Unexpected Events (Family Relationships are Hard)

This past weekend not only did we have my brothers memorial service, but something else huge happened in my life. My family is very big and full of many relationships, and unusual dynamics due to special circumstances. Most of my siblings were born with severe special needs or came to our family after tragic events in their lives as young children. Because of these things it can be difficult at times to care for them and to help them.

Because of circumstances beyond my control two of my sisters were taken out of a relationship with me. One of my sisters whom I was very close to as a teenager, left home 30 years ago, and one of my sisters was taken from me three years ago. In both these situations, it took me a very long time to forgive myself for my part in their departure from my life. You see in life we have choices to make, but sometimes those choices are made for us. When things are out of my control, I do not cope well, I feel that some how it is my fault. I will be honest, when it came to my younger sister, I hadn’t coped well at all, in fact I was living as if she had actually died. With my older sister, I actually had no part in her leaving our family at all. It was completely out of my hands, but I did not realize that for many years.

I realized this fact last Tuesday, when all my true emotions about losing my younger sister came to the surface as I realized I would in fact see her at the memorial service. All the feelings of letting her down, of failing my family came to the surface again. Sometimes in life the hardest person to forgive is ourselves. I struggle with this when it comes to family. I hate to let my family down. So, I reached out to my dear sweet sisters in Yeshua, and asked them to help me and to pray for me. With in minutes of talking with them, I knew that Yehovah was with me.

Over the week my daughters and I were able to have some very healing conversations, that to be honest, we would not have ever had if it wasn’t for the fact that we were indeed going to see my sister again. We had all allowed ourselves to grieve and accept the loss of her, instead of living in the reality that she had not died, but was taken from us. Death had indeed brought new life. Michael’s death had brought healing and life into our family.

So, as I helped prepare the arrangements for my brothers memorial, I thought about the fact that I would be seeing my sisters. I actually began to get excited about the fact that I could see them again, and we could move forward in healing even more from the tragedies of our past.

In life, there is always going to be tragedies and loss, and if we let those tragedies take hold in our lives they will harden our heart and keep us from the blessed life. We will become cynical and callous.

I realized I had done a little of that over the years, guarding my heart from more pain. But as people shared at the memorial service about my brother, and how he never knew a stranger, and how everyone was considered valuable to him, I couldn’t help think about the times people took advantage of him and his kind and loving heart. There were people that did him harm, and yet I never knew Michael to hold a grudge, or to want revenge, or to even think twice about those people. Some might say it was because he was naïve and knew no better. But I think it is that his heart was so full of the love of God that it had no room for bitterness, anger, guilt, shame, or malice.