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Missing Persons
October 4, 2000

"The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to … appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair." Isaiah 61:1,3

My sister and I've developed a strange new bond lately. It's one I'd trade in a heartbeat, yet one I treasure nonetheless. It's a bond of loneliness and longing — she for a baby, me for a husband.

The parallels are plenty and painful. We're both missing someone we haven't met yet, someone we can't seem to make appear with our best human efforts, someone everyone else has seemed to find so easily.

We've both had near-misses. Me, a long-term dating relationship with a wonderful man who turned out to be not quite God's best for me. She, a baby she carried in her body and in her heart, yet never in her arms. While I don't even dream of comparing the pain of my break-up with the pain of her miscarriage, there's an odd kinship blooming from our losses and longings.

I was touched when my sister called recently to offer comfort when she heard that the only other single person on my staff just got engaged, making for the fourth wedding in our department this year. Married at 30 after a decade of near-misses and dry spells, she understands my longing to join the "marriage club" and find my life-long love. And I wept with her for the child she lost just weeks into her first pregnancy — her son or daughter, my niece or nephew. She's my only sibling, the only one who can make me an aunt. I long with her for the child who is yet to come into our family.

What makes the new bond with my sister even more bittersweet is her reserved nature. She's the classic responsible, introverted first-born child, while I'm the extroverted, overly-emotional "baby" of the family. Over the years, she's been the sensibility to my sense. In moments when I've longed to know her more deeply and to receive more than one-word answers to questions about her lovelife and work world, I never would have wished for it to happen like this.

Yet suddenly here we are talking about her uterus and the single bed in which I'm still sleeping, the one we used to sit on together to stage Barbie fashion shows when we were girls. In our increasing phone conversations I hear echoes of distant conversations between those little girls we used to be — playing house together and dreaming of the real-life husbands and kids we assumed we'd have by now. Life hasn't quite turned out the way we thought it would back then. And while we both have much to be thankful for — great jobs, loving parents, strong faith — there are moments our longings and emotions are so raw — when I experience another break-up or she mourns another unsuccessful pregnancy test — they can't help but spill out in our heartfelt conversations. God's fingerprints are all over our deeper friendship — giving comfort and kinship when we've needed it most.

These are the moments I marvel at our God who creates beauty out of ashes. Isn't it just like him to take the source of some of our greatest pain and turn it into something wonderful? Perhaps in holding back our future beloveds, God's teaching us to better love the ones already in our life. Perhaps he's strengthening our family bonds before he adds new members. Who knows? Not me. I've learned better than to try to outguess God. As surprised as I am that my sister's not yet a mom and I'm not yet married, I'm equally as surprised by the blessing he's birthed in the midst of these disappointments.

When and if our respective missing persons arrive, I'll be tempted to pull them aside and thank them for being a little tardy — it gave me a chance to get to know and bond with my sister in ways I wouldn't have otherwise. And it's helped me trust God and his higher ways more. Through this whole ordeal, God's taught me that life not turning out as we'd expected isn't always all bad.

Blessings!
Camerin Courtney

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