Mixing Love and Blood

I am at our annual family reunion, 19 total, and three dogs, wall to wall Lee and Betty Benson’s; you can’t walk without stepping on one.  I can remember when it was only one, me alone.  I don’t do alone well but I am also almost clinically introverted.  I need really, really strong ties to tie me to someone and blood is about as strong a cord as there is.  But it wasn’t blood that made the ultimate knot, it was love.  Betty was who I only wanted even though she was completely out of my reach.  Me a wretched mess and her a Godly catch.  I cannot tell you how many times I have thought about the amount of Grace God had to expend on me to allow her and me to become married lovers.  I would watch her walk around the deaf campus and long to marry her.  Another great gift of Grace, God giving me Godly parents who instilled me a deeply seated desire to marry Godly (even if at the time, weighted completely on the wife's part).  But from that love knot came the blood and the blood has born to us 17 and no one seems to be slowing the blood making yet.  Family Reunion’s are just that, a re-tying ourselves together into one family which is what blood does, here and eternally; and as we all held hands and sang last night, “There’s a better home awaitin, by and by Lord, by and by.”