Unite: Five Minute Friday

Linking up (on Saturday) with the Five Minute Friday group. A real community of real people that encourage each other with a one-word, five minute, no-edit free write every Thursday night (or one of the following days).
Here's this week's link.

Unite.
  This is such a pleasant word. I was blessed to re-unite with my four siblings this Spring Break along with all our children and my parents.

My sister-in-law, Katie, is a talented photographer and took portraits of many of us. This one she set up and hopped in with a self-timer. It was one of the best times with family I've had in a long while. One of my siblings lives in South Dakota, another in Nebraska, my parents are in Idaho (along with two of my siblings) and I'm in Oregon. The last time my parents had a photograph with all five of us, I was the only parent. I was pregnant with our second child, so we had one little sprite in all the photographs. She was 15 months at the time. (She's on the far left in the shot. My husband and I are also on the far left)

My husband and I were the only parents besides my parents. My brother-in-law was deployed at the time.

2008 Thanksgiving. I was in early first trimester (on far left)

We're still stair-stepped in birth order. (Except my brother.)

The multiple times we have moved across the United States...we developed friendships with people, but truly our sibling bonds are the deepest friendships I have.

For you, perhaps that is not true. I urge you, however, to reconcile and live at peace with those you value the most. Heaven is about relationships. If we do not learn to love and reconcile now, we are not experiencing the fullness of Christ's love.

Thank you for being that community for me. United we stand, divided we fall. So glad we're past all the pesky little petty arguments that can separate siblings. :)

-Tammy