My sister Sara

Sara is my eldest sister.  She is eight years older than I am.  You’ve heard from her a time or two on the blog and my mother told you many stories about her childhood.  I always looked up to her, wanted to be like her from the time I can remember.  Sara was always multi-talented.  She is musically gifted, an actress, amazing cook, fabulous seamstress, storyteller, decorator, teacher…I could go on and on.  I always said she could accomplish more on her worst day than I ever could on my best day.  She loves the Lord!  Sara is the most giving person I have ever known.  She is also beautiful.  I once met a man she had gone to college with.  I asked him what he thought of my sister.  His instant reply was, “I thought she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen!”

Best of all, she is my friend.  It wasn’t always that way.  My siblings are all two years apart, and I came four years later.  Growing up I was always the…little brat to my siblings, at least that’s how it seemed to me.  And that is many times the way of it.  I’ve seen it over and over in various families.  The older ones so easily get used to seeing the youngest as “the little one” that even as they begin to grow up and others see them as humans with value they remain “the little brat” to their older siblings. 

As a kid I saw this and even as I loved and longed to be part of my family as an equal, I figured that when I grew up things would change.  I went away to a boarding high school and just knew that when I came home things would be different.  They weren’t.  Then I thought when I was in college things would be different.  Nope.  Surely when I was living on my own and then married, then I would be one of them.  Not really!  At that point I gave up.  I figured that if things hadn’t changed by then, they were never going to change.  I loved and looked up to all of my siblings, but at that point I quit pursing any friendship with them.  It just wasn’t going to happen. 

And just when I had given up all hope, Sara reached out to me.  She reached out to me in friendship.  I don’t know exactly when, how, or why, but just that she began to reach out to me in friendship, and it was on purpose.  I was tentative in the beginning, but soon saw that the change was genuine.  Some time after that we both found out we were pregnant, her with her last child, me with my first.  Our babies were born two weeks apart.  The pregnancies and births of our babies drew us together, and I was so surprised to wake up one day and realize that she was one of my best friends.  It was a friendship I had always wanted, but never thought I would have.  I am so thankful! 

Now I feel like all my siblings are not just my siblings, but are also my friends.  The change happened over time, and I’ve always thought it was Sara’s initiative that led the others to think differently of me though I can’t be sure. 

Sara has cancer.  She is fighting a very rare appendix cancer.  Right now she is at the hospital in Houston undergoing tests in anticipation of an extensive surgery, that is scheduled for Thursday, where they will place heated chemo in her abdomen.  This surgery is the only option that has been proven to have any effect on this type of cancer.  She must be sickness and infection free and there are insurance issues of concern.  I invite you to pray with us that the Lord’s perfect will be done on her behalf!