She is my sister...

"Hello." His voice on the other end of the line tugs hard at the tears lodged in my throat. "Hi" I answer him, fighting to keep them out of my voice. "Is your wife around?" He says that she is, that she is finishing up one of the girls' hair. My mind scoots across what feels like a million miles to watch the scene I have been a part of so often! Now I'm really fighting tears and am glad for a few moments to get it together until she gets to the phone. When she gets there her voice tells me she was is weary from a long day. I apologize for my timing, which she brushes off. She knows me well. I don't call on a Saturday night just to chat and she knows that something dramatic is coming. I start slow, the words coming in fits as I try in vain not to let the tears come with them. She listens, as she has so many many times, her questions pulling out details until its all in the open. Her laughter bubbles from the other end of the line and I have to join her because I know that she is right. "First of all" she says dryly, "calm down and listen to yourself!" I take her advice and let her voice be a mirror for me of my own current crisis. She knows me so well! Partly because she has always been another mother to me, partly because we two are so much alike that she knows the ins and outs of my strengths, weaknesses and failures like no one else. Tonight her advice and practicality are what I need to deal with the overwhelming presence of algebra in my life and it is so like so many other times that she has helped me cope! By the time I get off the phone I have a clear plan of action, something she knows I have to have to keep my sanity. She knows because she is wired the same way. The first thing in my plan is to cook. As I stand over the stove pushing okra around in the pan I think about this amazing woman who blesses my life so incredibly much. 

She is my hero. It was often to her that I went with problems I could not handle as a small child and it is still to her that I turn in my hardest moments. She is my voice of reason, my source of solid and unbiased advice. Her home is my haven. During the times in my life that my whole world crashed, it has always been there that I could go, not to escape my problems but to deal with them. When I need a shoulder to cry on or someone to have tea with or an ice cream, then I go to a friend or the sister just older than I. When I want to just dump my heart out to a safe source and talk to someone who will hear and hold my heart, I go to my oldest sister. But when I need advice, need a practical plan of action, I go to her. My middle sister. She is my favorite person to work with, she is the one I want to take care of me when I am sick and she is the one who will look me in the eye and say "Dayna, get over him!" It was her who made me stomp my feet for ten minutes strait when I was a child and going through a time with a 'stomping problem'. It was her who used to tell me "God gave you a head for more than a hat rack, so use it!" Sometimes I thought her down right merciless, but now I see how much value the toughness she taught me has because it is always always tempered with a gentle love and grace. 

Watching her raise her children, love her husband, build her church, fill needs no one else sees, bless people with a kind word, a smile, a meal... I know that I want to be just like her someday. I love her. I have no idea where I would be without her and the wonderful, amazing man that she married. Together they are for me a solid landing place! She is so many of the wonderful things that I aspire to be and I love her so dearly for it! No, she is not perfect. She is to much like me to be perfect :) But she is amazing! Her grace and ease with people always astounds me! She is goodness and light and practicality! SO many people have been touched by the way she lets God work through her and I am so very grateful to be one of those people! She is beautiful and sweet and full of life and laughter! She is wonderful! She is my sister.