FAMILY defined

An immediate family is defined as “a group consisting of parents and children living together in a household.” Extended family is simply defined as “all the descendants of a common ancestor.” Those are dictionary definitions, just words on a page in a book that exists simply to define other words. A dictionary is a cold and heartless thing. It defines cancer as if people’s lives haven’t been destroyed by it. It describes a heart as simply an organ, not something that decides who we love and who we hate. A dictionary houses terms that mean the world to one person and mean nothing to the next. According to the dictionary, the people who mean the most to me in the entire world are just “a group” who happen to have descended from the same forefather. I would like to fill you in on what the dictionary left out.

An immediate family is the core of who you are. They make you or they break you. They are the ones who are either there to pick you up if you fall or the ones who leave you there to brush off the dirt. A family brings both joy and pain throughout your life and you wouldn’t exist if it was not for them, and they would not exist if it were not for those before them.

I know for some of you your family has been a source of hurt and the reason you cry yourself to sleep tonight. I know for others your family is difficult and crazy and but hard as you try, you can’t make yourself get away.

For me, instead of being a source of hurt my family has been a balm for any hurt I might be going through. Instead of being the reason I cry myself to sleep at night, my family is the reason I can go to sleep knowing that, as long as we’re together, everything will be okay. My family can be difficult and crazy, yes, but (despite the fact that I am in Africa as I write this) I’ve never tried to get away from them. My family is my core and they have instilled in me the values and qualities that I possess today.

This Christmas will be hard without them. I’m going to miss Kari being the only one who still gets excited enough to wake us all up to open presents. I’m going to miss waiting for Dad and Tyler to get up before we start celebrating. I’m going to miss waiting for Mom to make her coffee (it seriously takes her AGES) before we all gather in the living room by the glow of our Christmas tree and open gifts and laugh and talk. I’m really going to miss eating too many cinnamon rolls and thanking Mom for the socks and perfume and the gum that will inevitably end up in our stockings. However, I’ve never experienced Christmas in the middle of summer, so this should really be something.

All that to say, family is a beautiful thing. And not all of us get to experience this joyous “group consisting of parents and children living together in a household.” Is that really what family is, though? Biological ties are impossible to break, true, but sometimes there are others in your life who turn out to be more loyal and loving and honest than any family member you’ve ever known. In my humble opinion, that’s family too. My (uneducated but heartfelt nonetheless) definition of family is this:

Those who will be there for you when nobody else is. Those who will speak honest truths into your life when everyone else is offering empty affirmations. Those who find joy in just being together. Those in front of whom you have no problem eating as many cheeseburgers as you want. Those who will never criticize in order to tear you down, but instead in an effort to help you become a better person.

That’s family. And if you feel alone during this holiday season when families are all gathering together, don’t forget that every single one of us have the same Father. Therefore, according to the cold-hearted dictionary, which defines extended family as “all the descendants of a common ancestor”, we’re all a big, happy, crazy extended family, whether in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Americas…it doesn’t matter. We’re all bros up in here.

XOXO

love love LOVE,

Christie

[only 10 days until Christmas Eve!]