30til30:day 5, suzanne michelle

so, we took a great memorial day getaway to cloudcroft, new mexico with several of our friends. i tried to get ahead and it just didn’t happened, so now i’m playing catch-up. i do plan to have this series wrapped up by monday (june 1!), i’m just not sure how all that is going to work out. but regardless, this was the post planned for wednesday, may 27.

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i have 30 days until i celebrate my 30th year of life. i thought i would share with you 30 people, events and situations that have shaped my life and who i want to be. it has been very challenging to come up with 30…i hope it inspires you as it has me. this part of the list is in a specific order.

day 5: suzanne michelle

the addition of suzanne to our family was traumatic for me. i was a verbal 29 months when she was born. and, i wasn’t happy to give up my ownship of our parents. my very first memory surrounds her birth. and, competing for our mom’s attention began a cycle that took 20 years to break.

for years, we competed over everything. because we were less than three years apart, we had many of the same friends (who were often siblings themselves). we took piano lessons together – and suzanne was better than me. we had many of the same teachers in school – and suzanne made straight A’s.

though we played together as children, once i got to be a teenager, we didn’t spend much time together. suzanne has a very acute sense of justice and didn’t like that our parents occasionally treated us differently – especially if she felt i got the better end of a deal. but that, in fact, is what finally brought us together.

i had just graduated college and was about to spend the summer living at home before i moved to the philippines. i don’t remember what happened, but we blew up at each other over something that suzanne didn’t think was fair. for the first time, mom made us genuinely work out the conflict.

and we’ve been fast friends ever since.

suzanne challenges me. we are very different, both in how we look and how we act – most people don’t even think we’re related. she sees things different from me. i appreciate that she wants to live honestly and authentically. she's willing to deal with difficult situations and conversations and doesn’t easily back down from what she believes to be true.

i admire suzanne and her relationship with Christ. her willingness to walk with others inspires me.