Somebody somewhere declared today to be National Siblings Day.  One problem though.  I do not celebrate my siblings just one day of the year.  I celebrate and thank God for my siblings every day!

I speak to at least one of my siblings daily and almost all five of them every week.  Honestly, the greatest gift our parents ever gave us was each other. We lift each other up, cry and laugh together, share our deepest pains and greatest triumphs.  When one is hurting, we are all hurting.  When one is happy and excited, we are all happy and excited.  We have been through a lot together, challenges and trials that have only made us stronger.  We know each other as we always were.  We know each other’s hearts, share private family jokes, remember feuds, keep secrets, comfort griefs and exalt in joys. Our relationship with each other outlasts marriages, survives deaths, resurfaces after arguments and flourishes in a thousand incarnations of closeness and distance.  We live outside the touch of time. There is no relationship in my life closer, finer, harder, sweeter, happier, sadder, more filled with joy, or fraught with woe than the one I share with these five. I would truly be lost without them.  To say I am lucky is an understatement.  I am immensely blessed to have best friends who are the very best part of who I am.  No one understands our bond and that’s okay. As long as we stand together, no one can stand against us.  I love them all and am so incredibly grateful for our extremely special and unbreakable bond.

“Like branches on a tree we grow in different directions, but our roots remain as one.  Each of our lives will always be a special part of the other.”