On families . . .

I've been thinking about birthdays, especially those of my kiddos. Their birthdays are milestones and moments that cause me to measure, sift, and count the days. I think about the way God put our family together--how longing and prayer met two gifts of mercy and grace. I think about the fact that they weren't chosen by us--but how God chose them for us, bringing us together in moments that defy description.

I recently read Cynthia Rylant's short Newberry award winning novel titled Missing May. It is the story of a young girl who is adopted and raised by her elderly aunt and uncle, whom she adores--and although they have very little, they give her a home and hope and a life. One summer, her aunt suddenly dies, and she and her uncle have to find a way to keep on living--"to keep missing May but still go on with their lives."

Help and healing come in the form of a letter she finds from May; May writes:
"I used to wonder why God gave you to us so late in life. Why we had to be old already before we could have you. I was almost as big as a house and full of diabetes. And Ob an old arthritic skeleton of a man. We couldn't do none of the things we could've done for you thirty or forty years back. But I thought on it and thought on it until I finally figured it out. And my guess is that the Lord wanted us all to be just full of need. If Ob and me had been young and strong, why, maybe you wouldn't've felt so necessary to us. Maybe you'd've thought we could do just fine without you. So the Lord let us get old so we'd have plenty of cause to need you and you'd feel free to need us right back. We wanted a family so bad, all of us. And we just grabbed onto each other and made us one. Simple as that."

Maybe the way families are put together are just as simple as that. I don't really know. I've tried many times to write about how I feel about my children, and about my profound gratitude for having been chosen to be their mother. I don't understand this gift I have been given in words--I only understand it in my spirit, which wisely doesn't need the words, after all.