TOTHEUNTAMEDHEART.

When you’re little every girl with at least one sister dreams of being an only daughter. Not that you could survive without your sister or that the precise idea of her not being in your world has ever crossed your mind in the process of your grandiose dream. Not that you care to be an only child. You just wanted to be the only girl. For the presents. You know? Because all the girls I knew with no sisters had big bedrooms they didn’t have to share. Fancy doll collections they didn’t have to share. Shopping trips with mom they didn’t have to share. Mostly, they didn’t have to share. That sounded wonderful to me.

So when you grow up & you feel like your insides are constantly hugging your sisters, even when your miles away, the idea that you would have ever thought that the gifts & attention would have been worth losing your soulmate over seems like the kind of stupid that equates to the time you didn’t feel like doing your homework in fifth grade & you thought if you scribbled in the blanks your teacher might mistake it for messy handwriting.

I cannot imagine life being worth it apart from sharing it all with her, & as each new day ends I recognize that she is the greatest gift he’s ever given me, other than himself. This gift that has been with me the whole time, unraveling a little more each day, becoming a little more beautiful than you could ever imagine. Its like the whole time we were busy hiding each other’s toys & swinging each other around by the tails of our shirts, God was busy saying, just wait child. She is a hole in your heart that only she can fill.

The word soulmate has always confused me, you know. Everyone always asks people in new relationships, “Do you think he’s your soulmate?” & I’ve always been dumbfound, because what’s the difference between soulmate & husband? So I’ve never asked anyone the question. I’ve never even talked about soulmates until now. But maybe it’s because I don’t believe soulmates are the men that you decide to spend the rest of your life with as much as the sisters that are tied to our hearts twenty-four seven, spending their lives in every crevice of our minds from the time we’re whipping broken Barbie dolls at each other’s heads to the times we’re laying in bed beside our husbands, texting them through their hurt.

My sister is my soulmate. She is the one who has pulled me out of the hollowest places I’ve been. She’s not God, but she is the closest thing I have to his image, being his hands & feet how I need when I need. In an unspoken manner, she knows how to heal my heart without pulling out a band aid & apart from asking me where it hurts. She just knows. She knows me, & I love her so much my heart aches sometimes. My sister has been for me in more ways than anyone I know. Even when its me showing up for her, it feels like she’s still doing more for me, teaching me a love that is pure & sacred & Jesus.

So here’s to big chunks of our hearts that will never belong to us & safety in someone else’s hands. To the girls that keep us sane, laughing with us in the midst of tears because we’re sleep deprived & the babe won’t stop screaming. To the ones who take us in when we have no place of belonging & drive us to grocery stores in the darkness & listen to our lives fall apart. To the ones who give us their beds & their nightgowns. To the ones our hearts never stop hugging.

You are the most necessary survival method.
You are the best God-sized gift.
& maybe just the best.