By Vanesa Brashier, editor and publisher of Bluebonnet News
I have spent most of my life knowing two things with absolute certainty: My grandparents loved all of their grandchildren, and I was their favorite. At least, that’s what I always said. The funny thing is, I suspect my sisters and my cousins could make the same claim.
My grandparents had a way of making each of us feel like the favorite. When you were with them, you mattered. You felt seen and important. There was never any sense that their love had to be earned or that there was only so much of it to go around. My parents were much the same way with their three daughters.
I am the proverbial middle child. I have an older sister and a younger sister, and while being the middle child sometimes gets a bad rap, I have grown to enjoy it. There are advantages, especially the occasional opportunity to remind my parents that I was the poor, forgotten middle child. I don’t recall actually being forgotten, mind you, but why let facts interfere with a perfectly good guilt trip?
The oldest child seems to arrive with expectations attached. Every milestone is a first for the parents, too. Good or bad, they are figuring it all out together. The baby, or the caboose of the family, gets a different distinction. The baby gets to be the baby, sometimes for the rest of his or her natural life.
The middle child occupies that space between the two. There is a certain freedom there. You learn some independence. You figure things out for yourself. You learn to be comfortable without always being the center of attention. At least that has been my experience. I see some of those same traits in my middle daughter, Sierra, and my middle grandson, Kyle. They remind me of myself in so many ways.
Being the middle child also meant my older sister beat me to another important milestone. She started her family first, making me an aunt before I became a mother. Her daughter, Ashlee, was the first baby in our family, and we spoiled that child mercilessly.
Thankfully, my sister was generous enough to loan her out to me once a week. Ashlee and I made our rounds to the library, McDonald’s, the car wash (where she once locked me out of my own car) and anywhere else that struck our fancy. Sometimes we went berry picking, one of my favorite pastimes. I loved having her with me. I still adore that child.
Then my sister announced she was expecting another baby, my nephew Matthew. I remember wondering how that was going to work. I already loved Ashlee so much. How could I possibly love another baby as much as I loved her? I really wondered if I had enough love in me for two.
Then Matt came along, and I had my answer. I loved him just as much as I loved his sister. Loving him didn’t take anything away from the love I had for Ashlee. There was simply more love to give.
My first daughter, Jayda, followed soon afterward, and I learned the lesson all over again. With each child, and later each grandchild, my heart just grew a little bigger. There was always enough love for one more.
Maybe that’s part of the reason I’ve spent so many years joking that I’m God’s favorite child. I particularly like to say that I am his favorite to my sisters, who vehemently disagree.
But when something unexpectedly goes my way, there it is: more evidence that I’m the favorite. A prayer gets answered, I’m the favorite. I narrowly escape some predicament I probably shouldn’t have gotten myself into in the first place, and clearly God is once again looking out for His favorite child.
I’ve always said it jokingly. The older I get, though, the more I think there may be some truth buried inside that joke.
Maybe I really am God’s favorite child.
We tend to think of a favorite as a ranking. Somebody has to be first. Somebody else has to be second. There can only be one favorite because that’s how it works in our human minds, but love does not always work that way.
I learned that from my grandparents, who somehow made all of us grandchildren believe we were the favorite. I learned it from my parents, who made three daughters feel equally loved, even if one of us occasionally played the forgotten-middle-child card for sympathy. I learned it when Ashlee was born, then learned it all over again when Matt came along. My own children and grandchildren have continued teaching me the same lesson.
Love isn’t a pie with a limited number of slices. Giving some to one person doesn’t mean someone else gets less. The heart has a remarkable way of making more room.
I think God’s love must be something like that, only on a scale I cannot begin to comprehend. There is enough for the person who has faithfully followed Him for decades and enough for the person trying to find the road back. There is enough for the person celebrating the happiest season of life and enough for the person wondering how to make it through tomorrow.
Now that I am older, I believe my grandparents and parents were teaching me something about God long before I was old enough to recognize the lesson. They showed me what it feels like to be loved individually without anyone else having to be loved less. They made me feel like the favorite while somehow managing to make everybody else feel the same way.
That may be one of the greatest gifts we can give the people in our own lives. We can make sure they know they are seen, even when they are not standing in the spotlight. We can love them for exactly who they are, not because they were born first, born last or landed somewhere in the middle.
So I will not be giving up my title. After all these years, I still maintain that I was my grandparents’ favorite grandchild. I’m pretty sure my sisters and my first cousins are still going to dispute that claim.
I’m not giving up my other title, either. I’m still God’s favorite child.
I’ve just lived long enough to realize you are, too.