“Blood is thicker than water”, the saying goes. I’m not sure exactly what it means- but I do know one thing. It’s only true as long as one decides it ought to be true. Familial devotion doesn’t always exist. Family can be as cruel as it can be kind- more cruel, because a girl wants her family to be devoted. She wants to be loved and cherished. She wants everyone else to try as hard as she does to make things keep working.

Sometimes she gets disappointed. I’m not saying this for myself so much as for two gleaming examples of who a girl should be, Amber and SanityFound, who have both recently written posts about being let down by the family we’re born to. But here’s the good news: everyone has two families! We have the family we’re born with and the family we choose. Sometimes we choose our birth families as those who we most love and devote ourselves too. But more often we choose instead our friends, our work family, or our church family as the people we turn to when the chips are down or invite to celebrate when all is well.

I think God gives us the family we’re born to in order to teach us. We’re not always like them. More often we have little in common, and sometimes we find that we don’t even get along. From our birth family we learn that love is not always instinctive. We learn how to make sacrifices to keep the peace. We learn how to cherish someone even when we don’t want to be around them. And all of those things are good lessons, but they don’t lessen the heartache of the moments when you want a hand to hold and all you get is voicemail. Those are the moments that God gives us our chosen families for. They are the ones that teach us about friendship and devotion, about the value of late-night phone calls and the pure pleasure that comes from knowing that we are enjoyed, we are wanted, we are chosen to be loved.

Both families are important, both lessons are needed. But we mustn’t confuse one with the other. One is love that is unconditional, unasked for, given because it is the right thing to do. The other is also love that is unconditional, but it is love that is asked for and given in equal parts, given for the simple pleasure of knowing it is there.

I thank God for the family I was born to, and I am humbled by the one that has chosen me.

Family: It’s a good thing, even when it makes us crazy. (Which, to be honest, seems to be most of the time.)