I had just sat down to study for my Shakespeare exam when I got the call.

–”Kristen?”
–”Janelle?”
–”Dad took Mom to the hospital.”
–”What?! What’s wrong?!” My voice betrayed the panic I felt when I heard those words.
–”She has this pain. I don’t know. Maybe her gall bladder.”

I tried to reassure her, promised to pray and got off the phone, swiftly remembering that studying is not easy when you’re consumed with worry. My mind began to wander and I found myself thinking about my family.

Since I’m now in my twenties and off at college, it’s easy to feel distanced from my family. Interaction is sparse; there are no nightly family dinners or movie nights and no schlepping siblings across town to lessons and practices. I rarely even catch a ball game or a school play or a gospel choir concert. Family has become associated with home and seems so far away from the single life that is my everyday experience. That phone call was a ground to reality. My family matters to me, even if I seem to think I am independent.

On the one hand, family isn’t easy. There are old wounds to reopen and new scrapes to encounter with the group of people that’s known me the very longest. It’s hard to be in transition: not living at home but not completely independent either. I wonder how best to honour my father and mother when I am old enough to make some decisions for myself. And when I don’t always think they’re right.

On the other hand, family is home. Shared memories and a common history bind me to my parents and my three siblings in ways that no mere friend could ever rival. They may not know who I am today as well as some, but they know where I came from. They come from there, too.

I have friends that don’t come from Christian families. They wonder what it looks like to follow Jesus and honour their parents when those two things look so different. They have had to work to build a support network of Christians: friends from school and church. I was born with the foundations for one. I am so blessed that my parents know Jesus, even if we don’t agree on the finer points of theology.

No one called with an update and I couldn’t study Shakespeare, so I prayed and went to bed. Without any conscious decision, I found myself singing these Pierce Pettis lyrics to calm my nerves as I lay under my sheets:

Can you fix this? It’s a broken heart
it was fine, then it just fell apart.
It was mine, now I give it to you
’cause you can fix it, you know what to do.
Let your love cover me, like a pair of angel’s wings
you are my family, you are my family.

We stood outside in the pouring rain
different people with a common pain.
A simple box in the hard red clay
where we laid him to always remain.
Let your love cover me, like a pair of angel’s wings
you are my family, you are my family.

After I finished my exam, I threw some things in my old Volvo and trekked home where I was delighted to find my mom, narced up with Vicadin, but other wise well. It was quite a relief. It was wonderful to see my parents and all my siblings, even if for just a night. After all, they are my family.