Family

My Aunty Sharon called me today, excited to tell me that she had found her long lost sister!! Aunty told me that she knew that she had a big sister.....it was alluded to during her growing-up years, but she didn't know anything about her. Through the help of an on-line ancestry site, she was able to locate her sister and her sister's son....and the rest is history....my history!
I am amazed at my Aunty's detective skills! Quite a few years back, she had "found" her father....he had been "missing" ever since my Aunty was 5 years old! I love that my Aunty Sharon was able to visit her father before he died, sharing the love of Jesus with him! And because she went to see her father, she met up with Aunts, Uncles, and Cousins that she had no memory of! I even got to meet one of my great Aunts and a second cousin, who happened to live here in the Tri Cities.....in fact, my cousin lived next door to me!! Yes, it is totally true......Kim was my neighbor for 5 years, and we didn't even know that we were related! I told Kim that I was thankful that I had been a good neighbor to her, and they to us......how awkward would that have been if we had been feuding neighbors?? I still correspond with another second cousin, Bonnie, and hope to be able to meet her face to face someday.
My family is not one that I would have picked.........there is divorce and destruction throughout, but I know the God who can make something beautiful out of something so ugly, and I thank Him daily for saving me.......so that I would not walk in the footsteps of those who have gone before me.......I thank my heavenly Father for giving me a sweet family life of my own, it could have gone the other way so easily. I thank God for my Aunty who loves Jesus and for my second cousin Bonnie, who loves Him too. I don't know if any others (of that side of my family) serve God, but I pray that they do. I know that my Aunty Sharon is going to share Jesus with her newly found sister, and so I pray that Barbara Jean will fall in love with Him too.
For in MY salvation, the chains of sin have been broken in my life, the sin that still holds some of my family in its grip. But I know my God, and I know how great His mercy is, and someday soon I will see with my own eyes just how far the Father's love reached into my family.

"What greater thing is there for Human Souls than to feel that they are joined for life-to be with each other in silent unspeakable memories."
George Eliot