Hello and Happy Thanksgiving!
Okay, well I’m a tad late on the Thanksgiving wishes, but I nonetheless hope your holiday was full of people that you held close and gratitude that made your heart burst. No matter what life circumstances inundate your mind, there is always – ALWAYS – something over which you can express your thanks. Life is too short and too precious to be burdened by life’s wearisome moments without taking heart first in it’s blessings.
With that said, perhaps you wouldn’t mind if I shared with what I have found myself most thankful for in this season: My family. That is not to say that I’m not encouraged by certain friendships and full of gratitude for every Lucrezio show booked, but my family is my predominant support system, allowing me to share my deepest thoughts, and I find myself taking the most joy in their individual successes. More than ever before, I feel that we have become a unit, primarily because we have struggled together and felt each other’s burdens for one another seemingly more than before. Even as I write this, I feel as though I could well up with tears if I allowed myself, but for the sake of getting through this post, I’ll save those tears for later :)
This past summer, my older brother, Aaron, had two tumors in his brain. This is not the first time the Lucrezio family has had to wait wearily for a phone call from the doctor, or sit silently in a waiting room until the operation was over. No need to delve into the past now, but all that to say, my family has experienced the fear of bad news more than once… more than twice… more than three times. Our faith was tested, but certainly we were left without wanting. We are all well and celebrating multiple victories! Victory. Seems to be a rather spiritual word, thrown out often to represent some sort of defeat. Which means that someone, or something, had to be defeated. Well, that is exactly why I use the word. A victory it was, and a victory it remains. Fear, stomped on. Tumors, dissected to nothing. Death, postponed. Dang. I’d say that’s a win worth reveling in!
Although we – all seven of us – are united well beyond that. We are experiencing together a wrestling with God that keeps our hearts stirred and our passions prevalent. There is nothing that unites one soul to another more profoundly than a common angst. When you understand each other, you listen to each other, and when you listen to each other, you can more readily invigorate each other. Truly, it’s a beautiful thing, and a place of common ground that has found me connected to my family in a whole new way.
So why then, you ask, does the title of this blog reference Cosby? Haha, well. If you are familiar with Cosby, even just slightly familiar, then you realize that the show encompassed a family. That was the point. Parents, children, siblings; the dynamics between them, the love between them, the humor between them. All meant to display the solid foundation of a strong family unit, without ignoring the challenges that can arise when children disobey their parents, or when spouses misunderstand each other. I believe it to have been a show filled with wisdom, creativity, and honesty. So naturally, if you like a show, you watch it. How about the very first episode and the very last episode in one sitting? Alright, let’s do it. Well, I observed something rather obvious. Everyone grew up. The kids grew up. The parents grew up. New characters came, like a husband or a granddaughter, and others left, like one child off to college or another to Africa. In that final episode, as Mr. and Mrs. Huxtable, danced cheek to cheek in that all too familiar living room one last time, I cried. Not because I wanted to see just one more Cosby episode, nor because Theo had turned from a scrawny kid with slim hopes of good grades to college grad., but because I thought of my family. And I realized that we too have grown. We are still a unit, but our time together has been dwindled down to once, maybe twice a year. We are left only with memories of Grandma’s Italian meatballs at the dinner table and cool ice cream cones while sitting atop the greenest of summer grasses, or dressing up in our favorite jackets and dresses for Easter and singing in perfect harmony around that deep black parlor grand. Those things really are now what we knew they would once become: shadows of the past. So I cried, because sometimes, when life gets confusing, I don’t want to escape as others might desire. I simply want to become a child again, and snuggle in my fathers arms with the wood stove burning during our favorite family movie.
Even so, we must all grow up. Although thankfully the story doesn’t end once the final child graduates from college or lands his first job. Rather it continues with life’s struggles intertwined and broken hearts engaged. In those deeper moments, we know each other in ways that younger hearts never could. So for that, I am thankful. And meanwhile, find myself all the more anxious to be with them again.
