Intended To Be

Last week I mentioned that I wrote a serious Monday Message about the divisiveness caused by the pandemic. However, because of Thanksgiving, I chose to hold off publishing it and write something related to Thanksgiving instead. Well, now something happened over Thanksgiving that relates to both being thankful and divisiveness, so my serious message will have to wait one more week.

If you’ve been reading my Monday Messages for a while then you may remember that I have a sister. You may also remember that we haven’t spoken in years and the problems between us run deep. She is a little bit older than me, and it makes me sad that we have never been close, not even when we were kids, but I won’t go into the problems between us. I’ll just say that she has never liked me or wanted me to be a part of her life. Holidays are a constant reminder of this sad situation in my life.

With both of our parents gone now and both of us now in our sixties, I decided a couple of months ago to reach out to her. I sent her a couple of very simple, brief letters asking about her health (I heard she was struggling with diabetes) and expressing a desire to connect. I hoped my short letters would convey my sincere desire to open a line of communication. Surprisingly, she responded. Not surprising, the first line in her letter was, “You’re my brother, but that doesn’t mean I have to like you.” The rest of the letter was a series of difficult questions mixed with pointed accusations and as I read it I could tell that she was in a lot of pain, struggling with her feelings towards me, as well as the loss of our parents.

I sat on her letter for several weeks before responding. My first instinct was to be totally blunt and tell her off once and for all. But my Christian side wouldn’t let me. In fact, after thinking about it and praying about it, I decided to step back and take a look at the big picture. She has had a lot of struggles in her life and a lot of health issues that I haven’t had to deal with. So I can’t say that I have ever walked in her shoes, nor am I qualified to judge her or anyone else. As I was mulling this over in my mind, I came across a story in the Bible about how Jesus meets a troubled Samaritan woman who has had a hard life and how, “His eyes saw her not as she was, but as she was intended to be.”

I took that as “sign” and wrote a response back to my sister last month containing honest answers, but I expressed them in a loving and caring manner. I also sent her a birthday card. On Thanksgiving morning I received my first ever unsolicited, very nice, “Happy Thanksgiving” text message from my sister. Who knows, maybe she is starting to see me… not as I am, but as I was intended to be!

Despise no one, since every one has his place in God’s design.

                               ~ Austin O’Malley