This week I experienced just how profoundly wonderful it is to have someone that you can call at 4:30 in the morning. Someone who not only answers the phone, but runs to where you need her to be at that particular moment. I write and teach a lot on family and usually I am talking about the parent-child relationship, but today I have been reflecting on the relationships that we have with people that are so strong and so close that they have become family.

I think most of us know a lot of people, even if we just know them in passing. We hear someone mention a name and we have a face and an experience to put with it. I heard once that the brain can recognize something like a thousand different faces. We have the capacity to know a lot of people, but we do not bond with each person that we know. A bond is something much, much more.

The people that we bond with are given pieces of our heart, of our person. The bigger the bond, the bigger the piece and the more irrevocably theirs the piece becomes. When you are with someone who possesses a piece of your heart, you feel complete, loved, known, whole. But, when you lose someone who possesses a piece of your heart, you feel incomplete and not a little bit lost.

I spend a lot of time talking about the bond we have with Christ through the indwelling of His Spirit, the bond that is shared in a marriage, and the bond that is shared between parent and child. But everything that I teach on protecting, deepening, and strengthening those bonds is just as applicable to the other bonds we share with people. And applying such things to these relationships is incredibly important because when these bonds are broken, our hearts are irrevocably broken too.

I have pieces of my heart that I have given away, never gotten back, and thus remain fractured and incomplete over. I still grieve these relationships, but I use this grief as a reminder to protect the bonds that I still have and to use discernment in forming new ones. Discernment is not the same as guardedness. Trust me, I did that for a very long time. I shut people out, kept them at arm’s length, and guarded myself from potential hurt. Unfortunately, I also guarded myself from potential joy in the process. No, discernment is listening to your heart, to your mind, and to your spirit when choosing the people that you spend time with, that you value, and that you give your heart to.

When I stop and listen to my heart, mind, and spirit now, I can sense my kindred spirits, my soul mates, the sisters of my heart. I thoroughly love each one of them. They are sisters that were not born into that role, but who have claimed it nonetheless. They are the ones that I can call in a crisis at 4:30am and know that they will come running. And they are so very special to me.

For them, I dedicate this poem by e.e. cummings.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)