It's been a long time...

All life is sacred. And all life is deeply, inseperably intertwined with the lives around it.

I've been living with some friends of mine for the past week, getting a glimpse of lives that are different from mine, and seeing what it's like to be a part of a family with three young girls. Sometimes it's cute, sometimes it's chaos...but I think it's always beautiful. It's almost like choraeography the way that things work together - and even more interesting to watch what happens when one more member is grafted in to the mix.

It's been a learning experience - but not in the way that you're probably thinking. Yeah, it was odd waking up the first morning in their house and hearing voices, when I'm used to waking up to silence - but most of the learning was in watching a family that is not my own function from day to day. Little interactions that most would shrug off as insignificant each become tiny pieces in a grand tapestry.

So, what happens if one of those stitches is removed? I ended up moving in for our trial run at a very significant time - the husband's father is dying. He was diagnosed with lung cancer about a year ago - and at that point was given six months. Now, the prognosis is three weeks - and old wounds have been ripped open as the reality of the disease surfaces again.

It's strange to be a part of the family when you feel like you have no business hearing the things that are being said. As a friend, I would have heard them anyway, but I was hearing many of the things as they were happening...an odd sort of feeling to be that close to what is going on.

Beyond that, watching any friend go through something like this hurts. It's always been that way for me - when a friend of mine is in pain, I am in pain.

It's the helplessness of the whole situation - fear, pain, uncertainty - a known, yet unknown timeline, wondering what it will be like when the stitch rips loose. Who, what, how will it be tied back together...