Surprisingly, I never gave much thought while growing up to the fact that someday I would have sisters marrying into our family as each of my brothers fell in love. Me getting married was frequently on my mind... my kid brothers, not so much.
As first Seth, now Matthew have found the girls of their dreams, however, I have discovered a new and wonderful blessing: sisters-in-law.
The process of taking an adult from a totally different family background and quickly merging them into a brand new family is not a seamless or effortless act. It involves compromise, forgiveness, tears, confusion, excitement, joy, and fear as assumptions are swept away, traditions are reevaluated, opportunities for offense on all sides occurr, and moments are shared which knit hearts together forever. For those of us who have not yet experienced this collision, it's hard to fully comprehend the shock for the new addition as they gradually discover that they did not just marry their spouse, and not just the new parents & siblings, but also a large extended family and a whole new culture and community. From my perspective, it's fun and rather wierd to introduce my 'new sister' to distant relatives and lifelong friends (examples: in the last month, I introduced Joy, who's been, for all practical purposes, in our family for 4 years, to my first roommate, and Kelsey to "Grandma Phillips," my aunt's mother who I've viewed as an extended family member my entire life).
When Seth & Joy started their relationship, I struggled with intense conflicting emotions. Joy had become a dear friend of mine before she & Seth got to know each other. The guarantee of having her as a part of my life & family forever was a delight. The fact that she was stealing my best friend and little brother was hard to handle. They visited me shortly before the wedding, and as I sobbed on Seth's shoulder and Joy (poor Joy!!!) waited patiently nearby, I realized that if it had been anyone else on the planet, I would have come close to hating her. Since it was Joy, however, and God had already knit our hearts together, all I could do was mourn my lost place as the most important girl in Seth's life and relinquish that spot to my new sister. I've never regretted it.
Matthew and I spent the majority of our lives bickering and frustrating each other and fighting for Seth's attention & time. With Seth suddenly more or less out of the picture, Matthew joined me in the northlands to attend college and we established a surprisingly close friendship. As a result of several semesters of ballroom dance class, he shared his new found skills with me, and we found occasions to blend our households of roommates together to share meals, desserts, and laughter.
To my extreme disappointment at the time, Matthew fell in love with a girl he met back home one summer. Suddenly I was usurped in yet another brother's life, and this time there was not the benefit of already knowing & loving the young woman in question. Several months of frustration followed, as I longed for opportunities to connect with Kelsey, but having no idea of how to begin without coming across as intimidating or pushy. With, I'm sure, no concept of how it would completely melt my heart, my soon-to-be sister leapt across the boundry separating us one day when I arrived home and she slipped into line behind my other siblings to greet me with a warm hug. At that moment, I realized that even though it would look totally different then it did with Joy, I truly had found yet another little sister.
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