family-relationships

The first person I knew who died was Beth March. I cried for three days.

It was about having a box in the attic or basement or attic or garage, something we could return to over and over again, something that said, this is us, this is where we were last year, and this is where we'll stay, and this is where we'll pile on the memories, over and over again, until there are so many memories that it's blinding, the brightness of family, the way love and nurturing is like a color you can't name because it's so new.

Emma stared at the ceiling of the hotel room. Her thoughts went over every memorial, each picture, the families and children left behind. At this point it was a nightly routine. Some people counted sheep. Emma counted her father__ victims. One by one.

She wouldn't climb out of the bed for her sister, but she had climbed into a crater. She wouldn't cross a room, but she had crossed a continent.

A personal journey is part of the generational relay. Live your legacy then pass it on.

Can I sleep with you?" asked Oz. "Kinda scary in my room. Pretty sure I saw a troll in the corner." Lou said, "Get up here." Oz climbed next to her. Oz suddenly looked troubled. "When you get married, who am I going to come get in bed with when I'm scared, Lou?" "One day you're gonna get bigger than me, then I'm going to be running to you when I get scared." "How do you know that?" "Because that's the deal God makes between big sisters and their little brothers.

Keep your heart wide open and you__l be received with open hearts _ not by everyone, but to be received by one open heart is more than worth the journey.

I'm young enough to enjoy life, and you're old enough to mind your own business.

A relationship is built on trust and faith, and not on rules.

...I__ sorry you grew up without me and that fatherly moments came second hand like clothing and toys from your brothers...

I rolled the ball of muffin and I waited and after my mother said, "That you should really take a multivitamin," my father threw up his hands in disgust, and I was positive I had no family at all, certain it was not my mother but the solar wind that carried me into the universe.

Glory had rehearsed angry outbursts in anticipation of his arrival. She began to hope he would come so she could tell him exactly what she thought.

Okay. Some things were made of hope. But not this thing. This thing he was doing, that was made of surrender. He did it anyway. At least when you surrendered, you had time to kiss the people you loved good-bye.

In the beginning God did not make a church or cathedral, he made a family. In the beginning God did not appoint apostles, or prophets, or pastors etc, he appointed a husband and a wife in the covenant of marriage. In Genesis, the first mankind gathering was a wedding ceremony, and not a worship meeting. After God, the next thing that came was marriage.

I sometimes wonder if I am crisscrossing my father's ghostly paths and we are entering same towns or roadside diners or the black ribbons of highways that gleam in the night rain. As if we were images in a time-lapse photograph.

...Families are Forever, and wondered if the slogan was meant as a promise or a threat.

So also in a marriage or in helping a teenager through a difficult identity crisis__here is no quick fix, where you can just move in and make everything right with a positive mental attitude and a bunch of success formulas.

..All of us are vulnerable to intense, non-productive angry reactions in our current relationships if we do not deal openly and directly with emotional issues from our first family__n particular, losses and cutoffs. If we do not observe and understand how our triangles operate, our anger can keep us stuck in the past, rather than serving as an incentive and guide to form more productive relationship patterns for the future.