If you’re an older sibling then you know, especially your first time becoming an older sibling. And maybe you know even more if you’re a young girl about to become a big sister. Because you’re aware you and your momma have the same body and you can’t help but watch how her body changes because a baby is in there. You are fascinated. You are curious, perhaps annoyingly so. A you are regularly wondering when this baby is gonna pop out of your momma’s belly. You’re skeptical. You were told that’s how you came to be, but you can’t remember. Scientists say birth is too traumatic for us to recall. My grandmother often reminded me how she was there when I was born and wanted to slap the doctors who were “yanking” on me. I was a big baby y’all.
I can’t say I fully remember when my sister was born, but there are pictures. How, and I do mean how, my father managed to capture pictures of me sleeping but in my pajamas prepared to go with my grandparents and older brother when my mom went into labor with Rachel, I have no idea. But here’s pictures of three year old me, in pajamas, and a scarf, and what I know was a single foam roller for my beloved bangs. And there are pictures of ne, in the hospital, with my momma, older brother, and baby sister, Rachel Elizabeth. There’s another picture of her in my lap. I am beaming. There is so much there, so much about the tiny human that in later years would prove to be annoying- whether it’s because she took my little pony toys, wouldn’t help look for her shoes that she lost, stayed on the house phone with her friend Latoya obnoxiously loud, or seemed to constantly prefer a nap then doing something together.
In our adult years that muchness I held in my lap, oh she’d prove to be the sister I was holding out for when we were young. Hilarious, a fellow understander of the toxic dynamics between our parents, confidant, fellow fashion and style lover, keeper of her word which now included doing things together ….after she squeezed in her nap, travel buddy, fellow appreciater of consignment shops, relationship goodness and foolishness listener/advisor, prayer partner, fellow recipes experimenter, accountability partner, fellow hope holder and expectancy partner.
I miss my sister for so many reasons, but today, the eve of what would have been her 36th birthday and as I sit in this coffee shop getting work done for all of the big life changes on the horizon in the coming days, it is her being my fellow hope holder and expectancy partner that I miss most.
In my work with clients, I often share with them that while they are managing anxiety about a positive shift in their lives, I will hold the excitement. The two can actually feel similar in our bodies and be perceived similarly cognitively. As one who often works with clients living with PTSD, depression, or generalized anxiety disorders, when good things happen they often struggle to navigate feeling truly excited, hopeful, or expectant. They need someone to hold hope and expect with them until they can do it themselves, and even then, I find they don’t mind the company as they navigate the shift, the journey ahead.
We need hope and we need to safely have expectancy. In fact when these things are absent, as a clinician, I know it’s highly likely the person is navigating a season of depression almost certainly, and anxiety possibly. We also need relationships; healthy ones. Healthy relationships are the ones where we can hope and have expectancy. We need relationships where we can safely share what we are hoping for and what we believe will be. We need relationships where we can co hold hopes and expectancies, and in hard seasons, that person can hold those things for us.
We need to be three year old Ahyana who is watching the hope and expectation of a child grow inside her mother’s womb, but who honors and knows she herself can’t birth the child. She can only come alongside. We need relationships where we can come alongside and hope and have expectancy with while honoring what is not for us to birth, not the shift for us to navigate, not the journey for us to travel. We need others to do the same for us.
We also need to be sure as adults we are purposeful to cultivate relationships, like the one with my sister, where there is room for mutual hoping and expectancy, where there is checking in, cheering on, accountability holding, courageous conversation having. We need folks who are absolutely meant to travel a road with us even just a few miles. We need folks who can in fact see how dark a thing is with us and helps us orient towards the light, even if it’s their light they’re offering. We need folks who can make sure our hope and expectancy grows roots and can help us withstand being rerooted.
My hope for you in this season is that you give yourself permission to hope, to have expectancy, AND that you allow others to join with you. My hope is that you discern when it is meant to hope alongside and bear witness and when it’s time for you to actively join in or momentarily stand proxy, and may you connect in community with those who know how to be similarly in your life. Perhaps my biggest hope is that for those of you who are finding it hard to hope in this season or cultivate expectancy, may you simply have grace expectations. May you simply expect that grace that is ALWAYS yours for the taking will take care of you in this season, carrying you until you hope and expect again, because you will, I promise, you will hope and expect again.