Differences

Yesterday I was pondering how different my dear Deborah and I are. Then I had an epiphany. There are so many things that we have in common. Of course the obvious ones are that we are women, mothers, wives and sisters. Beyond that we love animals and rescuing wounded souls. We love to read and write out our thoughts and even creative stories, though she is much better at that than I am.
But it goes way deeper. We both have dreams for ourselves that we fear will never come to pass. We both have deep wounds from our past, some others did to us and some we did to ourselves.
We have known the rejection of dear friends and lived to trust another friend. In fact, we are fiercely loyal to our friends.
We have bravely moved from home and family to pursue higher education. We did it as single Moms with kids, at a time when we had no idea how it would all turn out. Subsequent to that move we found the love of our lives and married them.
Perhaps I wanted her to be a clone of me. So unrealistic!
And as my Father used to say, " If we were all alike, it would be a very dull world."
Even God does not want clones or robots. He gave us each unique personalities and a free will to love or reject Him. He wants to conform us to the image of his Son- that is to be patient, kind, gentle, loving, forgiving, compassionate, faithful, merciful, gracious,peaceful and joyful. But he does not want automatons. He who created pansies and petunias and periwinkles loves variety . Better yet he just loves.
In the same way, I love my Deborah, with all her uniqueness.