A Month of Gifts: Day Twenty-Two

Lately, I have been reading Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts. As Kieran enters the last month of his first year, I decided to list some of the gifts we have celebrated since that wonderful March day as a sort of countdown to his very first birthday:

48.  Being part of a family. While I don't hold it against my parents, I come from a divorced family. I grew up with two families--two cultures, even. I had my Midwest American family with my mother, stepfather, and brother and my more international family, if you will, with my father, stepmother, and sister. I learned early on (my parents divorced when I was two) to be pretty calm with being away from home because, no matter where I was, I was always missing someone.

In January, I wrote about my homesickness in being away from Jordan even though I was with Kieran. At the time, I thought that was some kind of emotional weakness (getting soft in my old age?). I have realized that it is because I have my own family now. I don't know if you can appreciate that fact in the same way if you have always had that family togetherness that I did not. But now I do! It is an amazing gift that I will never take for granted, and I pray that I can trust God to continue to hold our little family together--because I know that it is not dependent on me (thank goodness!).