she will not be alone {the promises sisters make}
In the morning, this is on my daughter’s gifts list:
83. the ladies coming over,
and I look around the room, and in the half-light I can almost still see my sisters sitting in the chairs and cross-legged on the floor, never really leaving me.
The friendships of women are no light, temporary thing.
I hear the clink of our forks against the every day plates, the murmuring we do as we listen and savor sweet crumbs. We gather close, easy, leaning into and around each other. Our laughter wraps us tight. The history we share fashions us strong and formidable.
I lay my hand flat against the Bible open in my lap. Exodus 17. As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning the battle. But His hands grew tired, so Aaron and Hur brought a stone so that Moses could sit down, and they held up Moses’ worn out arms until sunset. And the Israelite army overcame its enemy. It’s funny to me how I read that passage and still just see Moses sitting on that hill, hands held high. I can’t see Aaron and Hur, and I wonder why, until I think of my sisters gathered, somehow still warming this room.
I can’t see Aaron and Hur because they have become Moses’ arms. And these, my sisters, have been my arms too, when I just felt too empty to move.
The pages crinkle as I flip fast. Luke 5:19. I can’t help but think of this man, another living paralyzed, another who couldn’t move. I smile at the thought: his friends carry him on a mat, trying to get him to Jesus. And when they encounter the crowd and discover that they can’t get through, there’s no giving up on him. No, he will not be left alone and unmoving. His friends literally tear apart the roof to lower him down in front of the Lord.
It is a gift worth listing, these sisters gathered.
For all our walking together, I know this: They would tear apart the roof to get my unmoving soul to Jesus.
Sitting in the first light of morning, I think of my grandmother too weak to move, of my mother and her sister lifting. I think of the women who, loving my mother, loved and rooted me too. I remember their laughter, how I stood under my mother’s arms absorbing their voices, their strength together. They sheltered and mentored me as they pressed on, as they meandered through the doorways together.
And suddenly, I’m full glad my daughter can see, that she feels this too, that she knows it’s a God-perfect gift,
83. the ladies coming over.
The relationships of women are no light, temporary thing.
It’s been rightly said that families scatter too far these days, that we’ve lost something by not living anymore in multi-generational groups. Sometimes I wish it really were as easy as wandering across a field to sit across the table from my mother and help her knead the bread, that if I missed my children I could follow their footprints to my sister-in-law’s back door and find cousins climbing trees together in the back yard. Would that every day, the wiser ones among us would lay their hands over our own and teach us what they know.
I look around the room,seeing them still, and suddenly I know why God made Family to be more than skin and bone, why He has yet forged greater bonds than genetics.
The night before, just in this room, and some not even present, sat three women who have survived breast cancer. I remember the year one lost her hair to chemotherapy and her husband shaved his head, promising his arms to lift her weary body. And we, her sisters, gave her hats of every shape and color—scarf-wrapped, flower-pinned, plain. And every time we saw each other, all our covered sister-heads said:
She will not be alone.
It’s true that at our best we prefer together for even the simplest things. Some of the women in the the room have stood by talking while I folded towels, leaned on the bar with crossed arms while I cooked supper, grabbed the broom to sweep. One of them gave up hours to help me plant tulips and daffodils in my flower beds. The days came, early on, when these sisters showed up at my door and ordered me to put them to work. And it didn’t so much matter that it meant tires against gravel instead of feet pressing down the grass.
Last night, just a question, and something happened: we spoke of our daughters and how we’re going to help each other raise them. Just something offered—one mother’s heart breaking over a daughter’s fear, that she has to suffer that worry at all, and it swept the room, this vulnerable wish to see our daughters strong. We spread it all out in front of us—their sadness, their anxiety, their brokenness, and with it our own shattered pieces, all out in the open. I don’t know what to do, someone said.
Most of us have come too far to think we have any wisdom of our own. So we reached for each other and we prayed and we asked, Lord, how? And all our clasped hands and our bowed sister-heads said:
She will not be alone.
I see now that I cross the fields all day long, every day, to stand at the sink with my sisters, to sit solid in the chair beside. We talk, we laugh, we pray, meandering in and out of the room, pausing at the great King’s table with our coffee, opening our hands in front of us. We bring each other treasures there—some weighty in the palm, some deeply felt. At least, that’s how it feels to me, as our emails of prayer and thanksgiving—some of us count gifts together, three or more a day–dissolve in thousands of ones and zeroes and fly across cables and through the air, as our spirits touch when our fingers cannot. And all our sister-fingers, clicking at the keys, picking up pens, holding the phone, pulling back the chairs at the table, all our given sister-hands say:
She will not be alone.
We will become her arms.
We will tear apart the roof.
We will speak as one strong, formidable.
Every time the door opens, my daughters stand on the stairs, peeking down to see. I hear them calling names, names precious, the names of my sisters, and sometimes they can’t stop their bare feet from walking down, quick, to fly into a hug, wrapped in arms offered.
And this is how we will teach them, with our doors opened wide to each other, with the chairs around our tables pulled out and filled, with our arms in the dish water and carrying plates and helping each other with the folding and the stirring and the loving.
And so, this is the promise we must make:
She will not be alone.
Could we, as sisters, covenant this together? That in place of criticism, we will offer strength? In place of judgement, we will offer grace. In place of degredation and ruthless, insecure comparison, we will offer love. We will offer loyalty. We will set our selfishness aside, asking God to burn it away. Our relationships will be steadfast. No longer will our daughters hear us tear each other apart with words vile, words ripping, words bitter. They will hear us celebrating each other.
And if need be, when you, our sister, feel too empty, too weary to move:
We’ll become your arms.
We’ll carry you on our shoulders.
No, we will not give up on you. We’ll rip apart the roof.
