Of dreams realized

I don't know why they keep coming back.

The people that is.

We had twenty-six people in our home last night. They were here to help us celebrate the fact that Jeff and I have made it to the advanced ages of 44 and 45. The food was Italian, the age range was from one month to early fifties, the dessert was lemon petifores and chocolate amaretto cheesecake and the boys nudged out the girls by two. The theme....family.

The theme here is always family! We had a few newbies last night.... the parents of our youngest daughter's suitor,the dear friend our oldest daughter, and of course the baby. One of my favorite parts of the evening was explaining how everyone was connected. How this young adult belongs to this parent, how this young man was attached to that young woman,how almost all that were once single have now married and miraculously their spouses have not run in horror at the chaos of our "family" dinners, how this woman represented by the picture on our fridge is my oldest and dearest friend and how she has all of the rights afforded to an aunt born of my own blood by virtue of the longevity of her presence in my life, how this young man in this pic had once been the youngest member of our original group, and how this beautiful couple in this pic were were the kids of the very proud mama with an album full of pictures of New Zealand on her I-Phone...and how none of this would have ever gotten started if it weren't for the small group of young people who began meeting in our home five or so years ago.

Things have changed quite a bit over the years. It used to be that my wonderful husband and I cooked almost everything and our young friends brought ice, or bread, or premade food stuffs in plastic packages. Now our "boys" are married and the newlyweds bring actual FOOD, and much of the dishes WE provide are cooked by our youngest. Which leaves me with more time to obsessive over OTHER details like having a place for our new mommy to go when she needs a quiet place for the newest member of our group.

Back to my original statement....

I don't know why they keep coming back. Our home is awkwardly laid out... to say the least. Our kitchen has NO counter space. The "public" dwelling areas are MUCH too small and we end up sitting on top of each other or inching around each other as we move from room to room. Everyone is always so busy talking we never have a chance to play a game or join in any OTHER kind of group activity other than a opening prayer... which last night was a prayer for the food, the birthday couple, our young man joining the Marines on the 24th and a request for a blessing for all in attendance. Also... then there is always some frazzled, crazy lady running around wringing her hands because she is so worried that she has forgotten something.... and most likely she has!

And yet...they keep coming back?!?!

Next time we meet like this, probably some time early next summer, we will be blessed with yet ANOTHER addition to our crazy group. I think I need to sit down with the engineers and contractors in our group and have a serious discussion as to how we can enlarge our home to accommodate the expanding numbers of our group...because by marriage,birth or rents returning to the roost...they are coming!

I used to dream of having a huge family that all came together during the holidays and for birthdays. You know...the one where the brothers and sisters were adults, and the ones who had married into the family were just as close and as special as the biological kids, and the aunts and uncles would be there,and everyone talked about life, babies, movies, music, books...and God, and there were kids tucked away somewhere in another room playing a board game, and the babies were passed from one member of the family to another as everyone cooed and made faces at them...and then they were jiggled and rocked until they fell asleep amidst the cacophony of voices and laughter of their family.

And then I woke up one sunny January morning with a slight party "hangover" that had nothing to do with alcohol and everything to do with the intoxicating time spent with the ones I love....and realized that I had someone received the family I had always dreamed of. A beautiful family, handcrafted by my Lord who understands all of my dreams and desires, my Father who knew,long before I was born, that the members of my family needed to be handpicked. That they needed to be readers,movie goers and music lovers, that they needed to love our Father to understand my heart, that they needed to challenge me to put myself out there or read a work of non-fiction, that they needed to enjoy food, that they would need to be patient and be able to process all of the words tumbling out of my mouth in a quick fashion, that they would see me in my panic of wanting everything to be perfect at the beginning of one of our family dinners and remind me to breath...that people came to our home because they love us...and that I would need lots of encouragement, love, prayers and a big circle of arms, representing the arms of our Father,to make my way through this big, scary,crazy world!