A Heart Decides

     Have you ever experienced it?  That wonderful moment when you sit down with the family of your heart for the first time in six years and it is as if not a day has passed?  That, my friend, is family.  I chatted with a friend a few nights ago and we talked about family.  Not the family of blood but the family of the heart, that we are privileged to choose throughout our life. 
     A very short time ago I was blessed to attend a wedding.  The bride was beyond gorgeous and the groom so excited about becoming a husband.  The father of the bride walked her down the aisle in his ASU (Army Blue Dress Uniform) with a chest covered in medals.  Military bearing was present until his sat next to his wife.  Then the tears overtook him as he watched another man take over his duties of protecting and providing for his baby girl.  Okay, I need a minute.  There tears are in my eyes as I relive the moment.   Of course we know that the father of the bride will never stop loving, protecting, or providing for his daughter, he will just share that role with her new husband.  What of that groom?  'As the Scriptures say, "A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one."'
     So, that groom, looking so dashing in his tuxedo and so overwhelmed by his bride, where does he fit in now?  Is it as a son-in-law?  Or he is now a son?  I guess that depends on the family he just married into.  In this case the answer is son.  There is always room for another son or daughter in the family.  We make room for those we care about.  We choose to love.  We choose to include.  We choose family. 
     Family is always a choice.  Whether biological or of the heart, we choose to love.  This is not popular with our culture of feelings of easy in and easy out.  Choosing to love can be challenging, painful, and wonderful.  You have to be willing to take the good with the bad. After all, no one is perfect and that is how we like it around here.  We choose to love our family because they are who they are, not for what they do for us, how they perform, how successful they are or any other man made measure.  So, in keeping it simple, we choose to love our family and grow our family as we choose to include more and more people during this journey on Earth.

The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together. ~Erma Bombeck

“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.” - Dr. Seuss

       Maybe Dr. Suess has it right after all.  The family of our heart doesn't mind our imperfections.  The flaws don't matter.  What matters is that you have been blessed with people who love and care about you and that is an amazing gift.  One that matters whether your calendar controls you or you control your calendar.  Celebrating family is a simple pleasure that we all need to enjoy more.