“There’s a difference between community and family. Community you can be intentional about building. Family is a gift from the Lord. You can’t create it. God is the one who knits hearts together. At that point, it’s about the response; you are given the opportunity to steward what you have been given. Community is cheap and easy to come by. Family costs you something.
Family grows organically and over time. You can’t just throw a bunch of people into a room and tell them they have to become family. It just doesn’t work that way. There is no real short cut to family. It takes way longer than we want it to and is way harder than we want it to be. But it is worth it.” – Ellie Stailey
I love my biological family. A lot. Most of the time, I wish every person in the world was a part of my family. Deeper, “hearts knit-together by God” relationship…. I have been so blessed in my life to have such a large number of those relationships.
Getting ready to leave for the race in 1 month from right now, has got me thinking so deeply about these people. The parts of my family, family from all different places, all different times in my life- and it is just so hard to understand a God that is outside of distance, outside of time- a God who has knit my heart with the hearts of people that live hours and hours away from me, people from my past that I still love so deeply, but am separated from (by death, by time, by stage of life,etc…), people in my future…
His love is just so huge and un-explainable. He desires for us to all be one family. He has adopted us as sons/daughters, we are sisters and brothers. My love for people, my love for family, for unity, is so huge. But my heart just breaks so much trying to love like He does. It is impossible.
Which kind of gets me to the point of explaining where I am at right now. It is like graduating high school. I am a baby about it. So many “last chances” and “goodbyes”. Fear and regret that I haven’t had a chance to show, to prove my love for each and every person that I have ever known. It is kind of like me trying to make sure that we are “knitted together in the heart” before we are physically separated.
Because I “need” everyone to be part of my family. I take the job on myself, I feel solely responsible for making it happen and keeping it up. I am out there with a needle trying to poke it into peoples hearts so we can be “sown together”. I want to throw everyone I know into a room and tell them they have to be family- and have that work. But I also want to keep them in that room. I don’t mind letting more people in the room, but if anybody gets out… I’m afraid they won’t be able to feel my love anymore. I can’t reach that far with it. and that breaks my heart.
It makes me afraid.
Trying so hard to trust- to let go, trying to understand that my God has a love that is so much bigger than mine, so much stronger, and so much farther reaching. Because I don’t believe that very often.
