Siblings Day 2015

This morning my dad sent me an email with an old picture attached. He said, “You can use this for Siblings Day.”

Siblings Day? I’ll admit, I had to look it up. Turns out, April 10th is the official day, and I hadn’t planned for it at all. No cards, no gifts, just this sweet picture and a whole lot of memories.

I grew up with two older brothers, born just a year and ten days apart. They’re 4 and 5 years older than me. Looking back, I can see what a gift that was — though as the baby sister, I didn’t always think so at the time!

One memory that still makes me laugh: I once had to chip in my Christmas money from our grandparents to help buy the Super Nintendo. The catch? I wasn’t really allowed to play it — because, of course, it belonged to “the boys.”

My oldest brother joined the Army right after high school, while I was still in middle school. At the time, I didn’t fully understand what it meant for him to leave, only that I didn’t want him to go. The Army has since taken him to beautiful and interesting places, and I love seeing the world through his stories and pictures.

My second brother now lives just two miles from me. That has its perks — built-in babysitter, extra set of hands for lifting, someone else to cook the turkey at Thanksgiving, and most importantly, a close friendship. He has mentored me more than anyone else, sometimes by example, other times by calling me out and pushing me to grow. In fact, being his “personal taxi” back in July of 2004 led me to meeting the man who would become my husband. He’s the one who told me to “suck it up” and “quit being a baby” each of the times Chad and I broke up while dating.

I don’t have one dramatic story of triumph to share about us as siblings. What I do have are thousands of small, ordinary moments that shaped me. As Paul Tripp wrote:

“You don’t live life in big moments. You live life in the utterly mundane… The character of a life is set in 10,000 little moments, not big moments.”

I am so thankful for those 10,000 little moments with my brothers. They shaped me, encouraged me, and left me blessed beyond measure to call them family.