God granted me one little sister. We started out best friends. Then I grew up and she became an annoyance. Then I grew some more and we became best friends again.

In high school I remember being jealous of how smart she was. She was invited to be in the gifted program, and I wasn’t even sure where the gifted kids met!

She had a sense of style and an eye for beauty. I’d turn up my nose at some outfit she had purchased, then would sheepishly end up borrowing it every chance I got because it just had that cool factor.

I wanted to make her over into my style, but she resisted. She was her own person. The “otherwise-minded” my dad used to call her. I couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t think or behave just like me. Thankfully she didn't, because I needed her to be herself more than I needed more of myself.

After I moved away to college, I began to realize what a gem she was. When she came to the same university, it would give me a thrill to see her on campus, running her own life very successfully, without my interference.

One day, after I was newly married and struggling to get our piece-of-junk car into reverse, I bowed my head asking for a small miracle to get that stubborn gear shift to slip into place. I had parked illegally to run a paper inside to a professor and was praying I’d make it back before I was slammed with a parking ticket we couldn’t afford.

I opened my eyes and what should appear, but a beautiful, long blond haired angel walking right past my windshield.

“Rachelle!” I called out. “Thank heavens. Push me back from the curb so I can get out of here.”

A university with 32,000 students, and my sister was the one who happened to be walking by at the moment I asked for rescue? Seriously?

She gave me a quick hug, rolled my car back, and I was on my way again.

My husband was blessed with five little sisters, who automatically became my sisters when we married. And though I was too old to borrow their clothes or make them over into my style, I found something to borrow that is so much better.

Belief in each other’s children.

Let me explain. There were times that my toddler would say the “S” word…you know “Shut u_!” My Mom brain would immediately picture them in prison, sent there for their temper issues.

A calm and loving sister would just smile and say, “It’s going to be okay. It’s a phase. She’s a good girl.”

Later as teenagers or young adults, I’d worry about my kid’s choices and how they were closing doors on future possibilities. Another sister would put an arm around my shoulder and say “I know him. He’s a great guy. Give him space to figure it out and he’ll make you so proud.”

When a sister in the gospel recently told me about her child purposely leaving her out of a moment that is considered to be one of those “parent pay-days,” I was able to return the favor and lend her my faith that this boy loves her and in his immaturity, had no idea how much this moment would have meant to her.

IF all we did was borrow a cup of sugar, or a pair of shoes, it would waste a relationship that could be so much more beneficial.

To borrow one another’s strength, faith, energy, creativity, and perspective, especially in parenting our children, fits a need every time.

God gifted us sisters that we are meant to borrow from. It is part of His perfect plan for happiness and success.

Delighted With My Sisters,

Roxanne