Family

My family is a little crazy. Come on all of you out there reading this right now that are in my family- you know it is true.  ;)  What I mean by crazy is that we are one great big bunch of blended-ness.  I have half siblings and step siblings, moms and step-moms, brothers that used to be step brothers that aren’t anymore but are still my brother.  You get the idea.  Our connections to each other seem complicated and strange and yet we are family.  What I cherish about this craziness is the way it has helped shape my view of family and the way it has made adoption such a natural thing for me. 

You see, in my family, we don’t define family solely based on ‘blood’.  Just because my sister is technically my ‘half-sister’ doesn’t make her one bit less my sister.  My in-laws aren’t just my in-laws.  To me they are my mom, my dad, my brothers and my sister.  I am blessed to have three moms.  A mother who gave me life and nurtured me through my growing years kissing my owies and tucking me in at night.  A step mom who has loved me well and is so good at speaking encouragement into my life.  And a mother in law who makes me feel as loved and supported as the rest of her children. 

In my family, we know that it isn’t just having the same DNA that makes us belong together.  It is love.  It is choosing to support and encourage and be connected to one another no matter what.  Isn’t that really how each family starts anyways?  M and I aren’t blood related (That would be a serious problem after all ;) ).  But we are family.  We chose to blend our lives together and create one family out of two.  God brought us together and we choose to stay together. 

And this is where adoption gets really sweet for me.  Because my family is the way it is, I have no fears of not loving my daughter the same as I do my biological children.  Why would I?  She is my daughter.  Oh, I know that she will not share our DNA.  Heck, she won’t even share our race, but it doesn’t make her any less my daughter.  God may have brought us together in a ‘non-traditional’ way but He brought us together as family. 

I also have no fear of my family not accepting her or feeling like she isn’t ‘real’ family.  Why would they?  There is very little about us as a family that is ‘traditional’ anyways.  We are family because we are family no matter how we came to be. 

Our daughter will be a Burton and a Nelson (that includes the Wagner and Ceran side too!) as much as our other two.  She will have another heritage from China that we honor and are grateful for as well-  A birth family that chose life for her even when they could not be the ones to share it with her.  But she will learn from the Burton’s to enjoy teasing and ping pong and to fight for the last scoop of corn casserole at holiday meals.  She will learn from the Nelson’s to be the first to say ‘I love you more than you can ever say’, to be blessed to be spoiled by THREE grandma’s, Nana, Mimi and Grammy and to love Ohio State football. 

But the most important thing that she will learn from all the grandma’s and grandpa’s and aunt’s and uncle’s and cousins that she is being adopted into is that she is family.  Not because she is blood, but because she is loved.