Note from Team LO: Here at Live Original, we put such a high value on sisterhood, unity, and relationships. It’s what makes us human, right?! So we have invited our very favorite sisters, Sarah and Gracie Tucker, to share what makes their bond special and how we can join together in sisterhood. We hope you love today’s post from Sarah and stay tuned for Gracie’s post on Monday!
Alright girlies, so here’s the thing. We get to choose a lot of things. We get to choose our friends, what we eat, who we date, who we marry, the words we use, how we spend our time… the list could go on and on. But one of the things we have absolutely no control over is our family. We don’t get to choose our parents, cousins, brothers or sisters. We don’t get to choose the homes we grew up in or the memories we were thrown into… We don’t get to choose our family.
Here’s what I love about family though, God chose our family for us. Woah. To be honest, I had never really thought of it like that until right now, sitting here typing these words. God chose our family for us, knowing that what we needed, they had.
He knew that you needed a built in best friend, someone always in your corner. Someone to play with, to giggle with, to crawl under the dishwasher door and paint your dad’s toenails with while he pretended not to notice. God knew that you needed to be stood up for when you couldn’t stand up for yourself, and on the contrary, He knew when you needed to stand in the gap for them to show yourself as courageous when you maybe believed just the opposite. God knew that you needed a hand to hold, a shoulder to cry on, a sister to call friend.
When asked to write about sisterhood my immediate answer was YES! I love my sister and could talk about her all day long! But the reason ‘yes’ jumped out of my mouth so quickly is because when I think of the word ‘sister’ and all that I would hope that relationship would embody, I can’t help but think of her. She’s kind. The kind of kind that makes you wonder how on earth is that girl so nice? She’s full of joy, carries peace, is courageous, fierce, and tender all at the same time. She’s an encourager, her words are sweet and gracious. If you can’t already tell, I think the world of this sister of mine. However, I know that none of us can be any of these things without Jesus.
Jesus. Jesus changes everything. It’s so easy to discredit the role of Jesus being the foundation of things that don’t feel super holy or important. Jesus being the center and foundation of our marriages, homes, businesses, etc. comes as a no brainer, but what about in our friendships/relationships with our siblings? People ask me all the time if me and Gracie have always been so close and I love to answer this because the answer is such a testament to Jesus in our lives. Of course we were close when we were little. In the jumping on the trampoline and playing barbies and swimming like mermaids in the pool stage, but as we got older it felt like our years multiplied. We’re four years apart but that felt like a lifetime when I was a senior in high school and she was in the 8th grade (as it would). I was a little ‘too cool’ to hang out with her which gapped the years even more, creating distance I didn’t even know I never wanted. It wasn’t until Gracie’s senior year that we became friends.
I could list a number of reasons why I think we became friends then. Maybe it was that we were on a trip just the two of us for the very first time alone or maybe it was because she had grown up and matured, or maybe it was that I decided to be nice to my little sister because I hadn’t been all that nice for long enough. Or maybe it was Jesus.
I’ll say this over and over and over again because it is SO true – Jesus changes everything. I found Jesus for myself not too long before our sister trip to Atlanta, Gracie was in the middle of discovering Him for herself, and Jesus became our common denominator.
When you know Him, you can’t help but love Him and when you love Him, you can’t help but love others… and when you love from a place of being loved by the Father, it looks a little bit different. It looks a little bit more like agape — love in the best interest of the other person. And when you’re loving from a place of being loved, encouraging words are easy to find, kindness is second nature, peace and joy are byproducts. It’s easy to cheer your sister on when you know and take hold of the truth that what God has for her doesn’t take away from what God has for you. There’s no room for comparison or jealousy, bitterness or envy. you know (because you know Jesus) that when God is being good to your sister, it’s not God not being good to you. Trusting that when God made _____________, He knew you needed her. And that she needed you, too.
Sisters, your sisters need you. To call out the good, to call out the gold inside of them. To speak life into things that may seem dead to other people, but because you know her, the halls she walked as a child, the things that wounded her, things that made her tick the way she ticks, you have the ability to speak life back into. To point her to Jesus in ways no one else quite could. We need you to be our friends, we need you to be our home.
I get to choose a lot of things in life, but thanking God today that I didn’t get to choose my sister. She’s what I didn’t know I needed. The imago Dei (image of God) to me.
If you’re reading this and you’re not a sister, take this to heart for a friend. Because here’s the cool thing — once Jesus is the common denominator, we’re all sisters.
We’re all daughters.
Let’s be friends.
Challenging each of us, myself included, to treat your sisters like friends (no matter what the age/stage gap is) and our friends like sisters. Lend a hand, be a shoulder to cry on, a sister to call friend. We need each other ❤️
Sisterhood.
Where heaven meets earth.
Sarah Tucker is the owner of Imago Dei in Franklin and Nashville, TN, where the heart behind the shop is to point people back to Jesus and serve as a reminder to everyone who visits that they are made in the image of God. She loves drinking coffee, long country drives, and spending time with her friends and family! Follow Sarah on Instagram @sarahatucker
**We at Live Original absolutely LOVE Imago Dei. Everything from the clothes to the heart behind the store is dear to our hearts. Check out their website HERE!
This was beautiful! It literally brought a tear to my eye. I have three sisters, and I am quite different in personality to them, so I often find it hard to appreciate in fullness what I have in them. Thank you for showing me again today. 🙂 <3