Who Is Your Real Family?

Who is your real family?

Is your family a place where loneliness disappears?

“My mother beats me up. And my brother and sister join her. One day, I joined a church community where I found my real family who truly love and care for me,” shared Lisa during a Zoom session.

A sad, hurting reality for Lisa is a dysfunctional biological family who’s not been truly family to her.

Real family is not necessarily about blood, like biological parents and siblings, spouse and children.

It can be about other people out there, such as friends or co-workers or neighbors or church brethren, who genuinely love you and you choose to love.

When I was much younger a little after college, I ran away from home. I felt unloved by my parents and disconnected in the house.

So I chose to live somewhere where I rented a room inside another family’s house. In there were the Mom and the Dad, their two teenage sons and one adult daughter.

Each time I woke up in the morning and came home in the evening, I would always be warmly greeted and smiled to. They talked to me. They invited me in their meals and family gatherings.

I felt loved and accepted in another family’s house. The depths of it I never expected could happen to me. Some pleasant experience I didn’t have at all in my own biological family.

Therapist and clinical social worker Dr. Wendy Lustbader, in her popular book “Counting on Kindness,” told of the story of an 81-year-old woman who explained how she sustains herself:

“I never sit still if I know somebody who needs me. I have a lady on the 7th floor. I do different things for her, like washing her hair and making lunch for her … This lady is only 72 years old. She could be my little sister. But she has no family, no one to look in on her. The people in this building, we are her family.”

Who is your real family?

In Scriptures, we discover one real family better than any earthly one whose Father loves His children forever.

“Even if my father and mother abandon me, the LORD will hold me close.” (Psalm 27:10)

“But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” (John 1:12-13)

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