brothers

I am sitting beside my brother at a restaurant he has chosen because they only exist in BC. Out of habit long forgotten I sit on his right side as he is left handed. It strikes me that part of me still remembers my place at the dinner table as we were growing up, next to him because my other brother and I always fought. There is a familiarity in the relationship that is comforting for it's history.
He asks me,
'Are you still working at the recovery house with women?'
I know what's coming because he asks me this every time he sees me.
'Yes. I'm still there.'
'Where do they come from, these women?'
'From all over, many from downtown Vancouver.'
And then he says it, because he always does.
'I guess some of them may have been prostitutes then.'
'Yes, some of them have been. That is where their addiction has brought them.'
He says, 'I know you have been doing that work for years, but somehow it's just not something that I imagined you doing.'

ah, so there it is. This truth that for him makes it difficult to accept what I do. He sees me as his little sister, not the woman who I am today. He doesn't know me as I really am.

What I really want him to know and to understand is my truth. 'I am stronger than you think I am.'

No longer the shy and timid little girl who in her admiration for him pestered her big brother with her presence. Wishing for him to notice her and appreciate her for who she was. The youngest of five I was not part of the history my siblings had with each other before I came. To my brothers, three of them, I was just a nuisance. Today the familiarity is only with what we were and not with what we have become. Too much time and distance have separated us, we have lost the sense of who the other is.
It's no wonder that there is a part of me that longs for a brother unlike the three that I have. Someone who would be proud of me for who I have become, but still affectionately tease me for who I was. Someone who would be familiar with both my strength and my weakness. A brother who would know me.
I've had a few friends who filled that role for a time. They move on with their lives and relationships are lost, just as my brothers moved away, each one in their own way. The comfort of familiarity is lost.
My friend often shares with me the verse that God has given meaning in her life. That when we delight ourselves in him he will give us the desires of our heart. I have come to recognize that he first he creates the desire in us and then he provides the answer in ways that only he can imagine.

Having recognized this now I look forward to the answer he provides.