Nourishment

"Even though we've never been together, and may not be until heaven, you feel like family. We love you."

How my heart needed these words!

A missionary couple came to visit us today. They'd just visited a supporting church in Indianapolis and were on their way to Liberty. 

Such nourishing, dear people. I miss them terribly already.

I'd been corresponding via e-mail with the wife. She's been a short-lived, but lovely Titus 2 influence in my life. I'd never met her before today, but my husband knew her while in his teens. My husband's father, Luther, worked for her grandfather as a farm hand in PA while in high school. He was given room and board and treated as part of the family. 


Luther's own mother and his sister were mentally disabled. He left home in his teens, to work and live with this family and be closer to the high school. His disabled mother never forgave him and there was no further contact with her. Sad. So sad were my husband's beginnings.


Though a Christian, Luther doesn't know how to love. Any real love and nurturing he'd received was too short-lived. Somehow, his relationship with the Lord didn't penetrate his heart deeply enough, perhaps due to his own stubbornness.


All this makes my husband's heart a miracle. He loves so deeply. So genuinely. He lost his mother at age sixteen, but in those sixteen years, her heart taught him much.


The missionary couple are in their mid-sixties. They've been working in Brazil for 38 years and they love it, though recently they spent a year in the States caring for aging parents. Now a brother takes that over and our friends return to Brazil next month.


I have weekly e-mail contact with my mother, and less often with my sister and brother, but since all my family are non-Christians, except for my father's sister here, there's a hole in my life. My husband and I cling even tighter to each other because of the support holes in our lives, and that's a blessing. Leaving and cleaving proves quite easy when the emotional ties to family are weak to begin with.


But the holes still hurt. Every holiday is spent alone; just the six of us, which tugs at all of our hearts. My aunts here have their own families to accommodate in their small homes on holidays. One spends the winter in Florida. 


My friend's words nourished. I will remember them long. She won't have e-mail in Brazil, but I'll put pen to paper and stay in contact, hoping we can bless them in some way. The kids will love corresponding with them, too. Having real missionaries in their home today ticked them so much. 


"Even though we've never been together, and may never be, except in heaven, you're like our family. We love you."


Each time my children lament about not having family around, I remind them that when they grow up, they'll have three sibling families to share holidays with--families with the same values and love for Him.


Praise God for that! Warms my heart just thinking about the blessed holidays and gatherings they'll enjoy. I pray that life closely knits their hearts and miles don't separate them.