Lent: Kindred

There's no one else here at the moment, but in the evening this table brims and bubbles with commotion. My wife and I have three daughters, and one of the most important rules we have is that everyone has to be present at the dinner table who is home.

It doesn't matter how much homework there is; whether the book sits at the zenith of literature, or its nadir; if you're so full of energy that you can't sit still; or even if you ate already at a friend's house. Dinner time is family time. Attendance is mandatory.

Thus it was that last night the girls sang a medley that ran through "Before He Cheats," "Set Fire to the Rain," selections from "Hamilton" and a dozen other songs. They sang in harmony and they sang over each other, but either way they were having a blast.

Sometimes at dinner the girls encourage each other, and sometimes they instigate. Often the youngest will switch from egging one sister on to egging on the other. Doesn't matter. I wouldn't trade a moment of it away.

The girls raise such a din that it can be a lost cause trying to communicate, but amid all the hullabaloo that they whoop up together, the girls are forging the same adamantine bonds that my brothers and I forged more than 30 years ago. They're one another's best friends, with a circle knit so tightly that no one and nothing can tear it apart.

Sisters can have a powerful bond because they were born to the same parents, but luckily there are times God sends us other kindred born to different parents, in a different culture, or from a different walk of life. Born together or discovered separately, the unbreakable relationship is something to be treasured and never cast aside.

There are times that it's the only thing that makes this life bearable.



Copyright © 2017 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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