I got invited to my pastor's church for lunch yesterday. I'd assumed it was a lot of people, and that it would be a huge affair there. But honestly, I think it was merciful and ended up being what my heart needed most. You see, I have no family, my parents were beaten to a pulp, cheated, abused, my dad was even electrocuted by his step dad while he was swimming as a little boy. My parents eloped at 19 and 21 ... to run 1,200 miles from our nearest relatives. Because the people they came from were crazy and didn't deserve them. I grew up not knowing my grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. The little visits, a couple of hours per year we found ourselves in the same building with them, they weren't good. Holidays were either awkward passive-aggressive personal attacks on us black sheep, or they were just outright verbally abusive. It would usually end up with us leaving early and driving the 23-hour road trip back home and every year mum and dad wondering aloud why they kept coming back out of sentiment. I grew up intrinsically "knowing" that you have to earn love. You have to be good enough all the time to deserve someone being nice to you once. And no matter what you do, they will Always gossip about you behind your back, and steal anything you didn't lock in the car. It took me 34 years to finally be okay with letting abusive peope go who don't want to be in my life. And since we came from people like that, we grew up isolated from blood relatives, but surrounded by friends we called family instead. And it was the 4 of us my whole life, against the world. Until one day I found my mother dead. And even the 3 of us drifted apart. My dad remarried, pushed my brother 500 miles south of them, and I' here in Mexico. I haven't seen any of my family in over 4 years. So Thanksgiving this year was especially intimate and beautiful. I took the bus an hour south to the sea town where my pastors live, I texted him to say I was at their community gate, and in 2 minutes flat there he was to pick me up, completely barefoot. He'd run out of the house and to the car with no shoes on the moment I texted, and said "Okay, we're putting you straight to work to help finish preparing dinner!" Haha, nothing could have made me happier.