One Friday Favorite: July 13, 2018

Happy Friday, Friends. 

It's time for my Friday link up with A Little Bit of Everything, Grace and Love, and Momfessionals. 

Hey, Friends. This is gonna be quick today. I haven't been able to write much here lately because summer continues to be a little nuts. We are setting up for an engagement party that we'll host here tomorrow so today my boys will be enjoying a day of me frantically telling them what to do and then telling them they didn't do it right. It's going to be just the most fun ever for them. In general there will be a lot of superfreaking going on and hopefully I'll do a lot of apologizing later. For that reason, I've got only one favorite thing from this week, but it - or she - deserves her very own spot on Friday Favorites.

Our Aunt Barbara

Last week we attended a wedding in Morgantown, West Virginia for my husband's cousin's son on his father's side. 1st cousin once removed? 2nd cousin? I don't know how that all works, but either way it was a family event. My husband's father was one of five kids who grew up in Elkins, West Virginia. There were four boys and one girl - our beloved Aunt Barbara.

Our Aunt Barbara has lost a lot in her life. She lost a daughter and now has lost all of her brothers. And though she stands alone now as the matriarch of this family, when we are around her we know without a doubt that she still believes that God is absolutely, irrevocably good. And she reminds us all the time that faith and love and family are the most important things in all the world.

I could not be more grateful for the way she loves us - not only my husband and my boys, who have her blood running through them, but me - a gal who just showed up one day twenty-five years ago and was welcomed by her as if I had been a Skinner all along.

Aunt Barbara's love is big and bold and bright. There is nothing quiet or subtle or conditional about it. We simply cannot escape it.

Her hugs are legendary in our little family. They seep into your bones and your soul and literally seem to ground you into the space your feet have landed next to hers. You are anchored there with her for a moment - a surefire member of her clan who knows without a doubt in that instant that you are loved and cherished. You know through that strong squeeze that no matter where you go in your life there will always be somewhere and a whole lot of someones to whom you belong.

After we had said our good-byes, Drew put it this way: "Lots of our family are good at hugs. Like some of them are in the minor leagues. Like, they might even be brought up to the big leagues some day. But, Aunt Barbara is in the Majors. She's like a Hall of Famer."

That she is. I'm so grateful for the example of her deep love and loyalty to her people. What a gift she is to us.

I hope you have an Aunt Barbara in your life, Friends. And if you don't, I hope you try to be her. The world could stand a few more of her these days.

Have a great weekend!