Belonging

Belonging! This is something you expect to find in your own family and hope to find in your extended family or friends. Your own family usually, hopefully, accepts you for exactly who you are. They love you unconditionally and don't judge you for being you. There is no favortism shown to or between siblings. They laugh with you, cry with you, they are always there. You don't have to seek them out as if time goes by they will find you. That is the fortune that is my family. Always there, always forgiving, always supportive and always remind me they love me. It is a beautiful thing.

I have found that it can be more conditional outside the family tree. I have met those who never feel that kind of love from their families. The eyes of each person is on themselves or their needs or their feelings alone. In these unfortunate relationships love, loyalty, kindness, friendship, compassion, forgiveness, they just aren't there. Or they have to be begged for, sought after, negotiated. There are conditions for these things. I will only forgive you if, I will love you if, I will only spend time with you when. It is not a given that they will be there nor that they will want you there. It is the exception not the rule. It is sad.

Have you ever seen this? I watch when I am at a gathering and see people who look like they just met, superficial relationships with no real deep understanding of those relatives or friends in the room. At times it has resembled a chance meeting and conversation in the grocery store line, where you discuss the headlines from People and the weather. You could vanish tomorrow and no one would miss a step. There would be no sense of loss because there was never a committment to love. Tragic.

I belonged to a social group or three as a child and perhaps that helped to develop a sense of belonging and the art of true loyalty. Never forsaking others because my feelings were hurt, or because I didn't get my way. It was never about ME but always about OTHERS. The focus wasn't on meeting my needs but really listening and looking at the needs of my "family" or "troop". I never earned a merit badge for self gratification or best manicure or most expensive bicycle. I did earn badges for services given, volunteering, and skills that would benefit a community. Those lessons stuck with me to this day and I am so grateful they did.

I have so much confidence in the relationships in my own family that I know I can be myself always, I can call and annoy them at any time, we would get together for no reason at all if we lived close enough, that in MOST circumstances they would choose to spend time with family over anything else and that I will never get far away before they start looking for me. My tribe, my hood, my family. It is a wonderful thing!

"I promise to do my best to love God and my country, to help other people every day, especially those at home" The Brownie Girl Scout Promise, 1963

1 Corinthians 13:4-8 ESV
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.