Love at Home

"There is beauty all around, when there's love at  no one home..."

For reasons even I'd like to know, Braden and I have never gotten along. The day he came home from the hospital I stepped on his head. I spent the rest of his years as a baby trying to hide him. Under blankets, stuffed animals, and any other convenient nearby object.

Once Braden could talk/walk, our rivalry got more complex. Braden would steal toys from my room, I'd steal them back, and the next thing we knew we were sitting holding hands in the chairs of love. Your common time-out chair consists of the child sitting in a corner for a certain period of time. Our time-out chairs were much more evil and we had to sit in the chairs holding hands and singing Love at Home until we both apologized. Of course, it was even more torturous because I was too stubborn to believe I'd done anything wrong.

I lived my entire childhood thoroughly convinced that Braden's sole purpose in life was to ruin mine. We wrecked every loving family song in the book.
"I hate brother, he hates me, we hate sister, yessiree. They all hate us, and so you see, we're such a loving family..."


But recently things have almost reached a midpoint. Nowadays Braden and I are either really nice to each other or really not. When we're not yelling at each other, we're actually pretty good siblings. We make each other lunch, I let Braden sleep in my room when he has a nightmare, we play games together, we joke around, Braden wakes me up in the morning when I forget to turn my alarm on... all of that good stuff.

For family home evening on Monday night our family has a song night. We all harmonized and it was way cool. I was proud of myself when I hit every note to High On a Mountain Top. We sang probably over 20 songs, everyone suggesting their favorites. At the end I was really hoarse, but as I sang and looked around at my family and really felt that love at home. Even though sometimes they drive you crazy, your family members are the people that are always there. Your friends come and go but you can always count on that loving family at home to take care of you.