Lets be buds today

My brother Tim and I used to fight like all brothers do. I was four and a half years older than him and dominated most of our interactions I am sure. But we spent every waking moment around each other and sleeping hours as well, we shared rooms until I was almost seventeen. In our family we were all at one each others throat sooner or later. Many of my best memories of my childhood growing up are of Tim and I laying on the floor of one of our bedroom floors (in the twelve years of sharing a room there were nine different houses) playing G.I.Joes. or several other things through out the years. Even in those moments you never knew when the heat of life would come through and we would start fighting about whatever. Occasionally we would even get to the point were we had to walk away from each other. And there were times when I would forcefully torture him and make him cry. So even in our relationship there was a closeness but we never knew when we would have our next blow up or fight. Looking back on our family it was probably more often than I care to remember.
But every once in a while when we knew that we would be around each other all day we would say the words that provided safety in the midst of the crazyness that was our family.
"Lets be buds today" when either one of us said that the other one would automatically know that any fighting or bickering was off limits for the rest of the day. "Lets be buds today" was our way of telling each other that we needed a break from the chaos and anger involved in surviving a day in our life. Now looking back it was security in the midst of a home that taught us to attack each other. We had to live like soldiers at war never knowing when the next firefight was going down, and one one of us said those words it was like offering safety.
I haven't spoken those words in years, and now we are very different men than the boys we once were. I long for the days when I can look to anyone and say "lets be buds today." What is amazing is that I have been given those moments, with him and at this point many others. It is a beautiful relationship that can give you a place of security and peace even if for just a brief moment. And I just want to praise God that period of my life is over and that now that God has truly begun to heal so many of those memories from my family, and now I find that there are so many beautiful memories that I have forgotten but not lost many of them started with "lets be buds today."