Recently Sister K and I attended the Gavin Degraw and Colbie Caillat concert. It was at an outdoor venue where you sit on blankets enjoying food and drinks. These tickets were my birthday gift from Sister K and we had been anxiously awaiting this concert for awhile. It was a lot of fun and if you have a chance to attend wherever you live I highly recommend it.

Sister K on our blanket aka my freshmen year college dorm room comforter. Gotta love denim.

 Enjoying my margarita and listening to some tunes.

Gavin Degraw has a song on his new cd called “Soldier.” You can find the lyrics here. The song has a lot of meaning for anyone but Sister K and I have found it has a lot of meaning for us right now. It has to do with being there for someone but moreso than that it has to do with living up to the promise of being there. There is a line when he says that’s why it’s called the moment of truth.

Lately I have given some thought to the relationship Sister K and I have. We get asked by parents of girls how we became so close, what was the secret? The secret is I don’t know. We fight harder but love harder than anyone I know. We have always been this way. But looking at the way our life has gone up until this point I have to wonder if in many ways we were given each other as siblings and our relationship was being prepared for the greatest challenge we would face together, Mom’s MS. Being a child of someone with MS is not for the weak. It’s only reserved for the strongest of families and the strongest of children. No matter how old I get, I know that the spirit and heart of a family resides in its children. This also means that our family needs Sister K and Me now more than ever. To bring some spunk, to bring some laughter, to bring a distraction, to bring energy when Dad is spread too thin and Mom is feeling like she can’t do it. In many ways we have become our family’s “soldier.”

Sister K and I stood up and belted out these words at the concert. We have listened to this song repeatedly on the cd and practically have them memorized. It is a song that couldn’t have come along at a better time for us. In a sense this song is us.

Do you have any relationships where you are a “soldier” to someone else, whether it’s family or friends? Do you believe in the power of children no matter what age to add a particular energy to a family? Have you heard this song and listened to the lyrics? Do you like Gavin Degraw and Colbie Caillat?