Sisters

Throughout our lives there are things that are very important to us. For some, this yearning comes early in life, and may reflect something that we want in the full depths of our hearts. It may show something that is missing, some dark void that needs to be filled.
For me, this was my desire to have a sister. I had three older brothers who were never neglectful of picking on me and making my life sad and tormented. I was aware, early on, that my mother had given birth to a daughter four years before me, but that the child had died at birth. In addition, she had hydrocephalus and could not have survived.

I so longed to have a sister with whom to share secrets, learn from, get hand-me-downs, and just play. But alas, it was not to be.
It wasn’t until I was a grown woman that sisters began to appear in my life. I learned upon the death of my father, a man I hadn’t known, that I had a half-sister who was older. It was a pleasant connection. We became briefly acquainted and we had some things in common. Unfortunately, distance and events, and the fact that she had a large family of sisters on her own, prevented the cementing of a close relationship between us.
As I grew older, in fact, reaching retirement, I found that I had two more sisters. One of whom was welcoming and friendly and good-natured, and the other of whom had no interest in connecting at all. These relationships filled me with confusion. I wondered why God would send whom I felt I needed for my life to be fulfilled when I no longer felt the need. Yes, my prayers were answered, but it seemed too late.
The moral of the story is that God will answer your prayers. God will also make things happen in His time, not yours. But the key here is not that I didn’t want and need my sisters, rather I needed to develop that part of myself which was capable of standing on its own, speaking with my own voice, becoming who I was meant to be, rather than being a tin-type of another woman.
Would life have been different if my sisters had been known to me earlier? Certainly. But if there had been rejection early on, I may not have been able to deal with it. My brothers were brutal at an early age, perhaps even abusive, but on my own, I withstood it, I learned to fight back, and now I can enjoy my sisters as people with independent choices and lifestyles, without feeling unduly pressured to be something other than who I am.
May you be richly blessed.