A Parent's Pact

I am not sure if this was God speaking to me, or my mother whispering in my ear, but I feel really supported right now.  After all the lies, the people using and preying on my sister and I, and after years of trying to separate the "real" from the "fake", I think I finally get "it".  I have realized that I have issues, especially when it comes to trust.  As encouraged by my mother, I don't trust people as far as I can throw them, not family, not friends, and definitely not strangers.

My entire life, it has been just my mother, my sister and I living together.  Growing up, all my "family" in Detroit was really my church-family, and all my blood-kin was out of town.  I loved going out of town to visit, it's nothing like being around your family and people going "you just just like such-and-such" or going to Chicago and all of my cousin's friends mistaking me for her because we resembled each other so well.  However, when I returned back to Detroit, I would feel alone because I wasn't really around people who looked and sounded like me.  It was always difficult for me to define "family" because it wasn't always necessarily my blood-relatives I was around, but the family God placed in our lives.

The title of this post is "A Parent's Pact" and I could compare it to similar pacts groups of friends/families make.  Even though I do not have proof, I feel deep down in my heart that my momma made a pact with her cousins and some of my church family, and I believe she asked them to take care of me and my sister if anything happened to her.  This may have been when we were younger since she was a single parent, however I believe they are still holding to their pact even today.  To be 24 years old and an adult for approximately 6 years, I actually feel like I have real family that care about me, look out for me, and are genuinely happy for my success!  I think she agreed to do the same for our other cousins and I know that she would.  However, it really touches my heart to be surrounded by real family that is bonded together by blood and also by love.