Love of Family

Tonight my mind is mulling over family. I have been saying “that’s what family does” a lot, I find it is a common theme in my life right now. Family. It is a big word, with a lot of meaning, used in many different scenarios.

I decided to look up the definition for family just to see, and this is what I found;

Family: parents and their children, considered as a group,

Funny thing is when I read that, that is not at all what I think family as. I think of family is so many different ways but I don’t know that I would have ever describe it as that, it is so much more, and really not one of the twenty definitions listed did it justice. I know that some people who think of their “family” have bad thoughts, a bitter taste, and memories they chose not to think of. Others hear the word “family” and their faces light up as they walk down the road of good memories and warm thoughts.

Family: a group of people, learning, leaning, accepting, doing, achieving, watching, frustrating, growing, changing, supporting, challenging, loving, dying for.

Those are just a few words that go through my mind. I guess for me family goes so much deeper then parents and their children, ESPECIALLY when you have accept Christ as your father, and all your brothers and sisters that come along with that adoption!! And by the definition I listed above Kevin and I are not a family- we don’t have children in our home, so are we any less a family?

Even as I sit here and write I have such a hard time wrapping my mind around this term, around these people, around even my thoughts. I feel as though if we lean on our flesh, relying on it to do what “family” should do, we will fail miserably. If we die to ourselves, our flesh, relying on nothing more then the spirit that is within each one of us, we will love as a family should love.

A family should love no matter what, when you are down they come down with you, when you are up, they are up with you. Family is there, doing, helping and being, not because they have to, not because it is what is expected of you, not because it is what you are told to do, but because the spirit with in you is begging you to let Him love through you.

Kevin and I are always encouraging one another to not love with our flesh, because our flesh is bitter, is angry, holds judgment and grudges, it is self centered and self focused. The Spirit, Christ living, breathing, and dwelling in each of us, knows exactly how to love the person you most dislikes, knows how to accept the person that you get most annoyed with, loves the person who has cut you deeper then any sword or knife could ever cut. Christ within us all knows how to love. Humans; me, you, we only love in our most convenient ways.

I know that when I am loving not with my flesh but with the Spirit, I am not even aware of the things I am doing, because it is nothing of me and all of Him…so any good, or decent thing you see in me, is not me- it is Him, because I am nothing without his Love!