The Extreme Gift

There are people who would never have made it to our friend list.

Not because they are bad people.

Sometimes, simply because we would never have found each other.

Different temperaments.
Different interests.
Different cities.
Different generations.
Different ideas of what constitutes a reasonable conversation.

Had life asked us to choose our people, some of them would probably not have made the shortlist.

And yet, God did not ask us.

He simply put them in our family.

Perhaps that is one of the most extreme gifts He ever gave us.

Family.

They can be the people who make a house feel like home.

The ones who know the stories behind the stories.

The ones who can make you laugh over something nobody else would understand.

The ones who remember who you were before the world started calling you by your titles.

And sometimes, they are also the people whose problems become your problems.

Their pain finds a room in your heart.

Their disappointments somehow become your concern.

Their foolish decisions can cost you sleep.

Their emergencies can rearrange your carefully constructed plans.

You carry them because they are yours.

And perhaps that is where the gift becomes strange.

Because family is not always convenient.

It is not always easy.

It does not always fit neatly into the life we have designed.

There are seasons when distance separates us.

Different countries.

Different cities.

Different homes.

Different lives.

Sometimes circumstances do what geography cannot. They pull people apart.

And yet there is something stubborn about family.

You can go years without seeing someone and still know exactly where they belong in your heart.

You can disagree.

You can argue.

You can become strangers for a season.

You can even reach that strange place where you no longer know how to have a normal conversation.

But then something happens.

Someone mentions their name.

Or you see an old photograph.

Or a particular song plays.

Or you suddenly wonder how they are doing.

And without being invited, the heart makes room.

Again.

Perhaps Shakespeare understood something of this darker side of family when he wrote of the "curse" that can accompany it.

Because family can indeed feel like a burden.

But even the burden reveals something extraordinary.

You carry what you would never have volunteered to carry simply because they are yours.

That is not friendship.

Friendship is beautiful precisely because, in some sense, we choose it.

Family is different.

Family says:

You did not choose me.

I did not choose you.

But here we are.

And somehow, across the years, the arguments, the celebrations, the disappointments, the weddings, the funerals, the births, the illnesses, the journeys and the long silences...

Here we are.

There is something almost unreasonable about it.

God went to extraordinary lengths to give us these people.

Before we had opinions about who belonged in our lives, He had already placed them there.

Before we could choose friends, He gave us brothers and sisters.

Before we understood responsibility, He gave us parents.

Before we understood what it meant to be remembered, He gave us people who would remember us.

Perhaps that is why family can be both joy and burden.

Because the gift is not merely having people around you.

The gift is having people whose existence has become permanently connected to yours.

And maybe we do not need to understand it completely.

Maybe that is the point.

Because if you are already calling a family member...

Or wondering when last you spoke...

Or quietly hoping they are okay...

Or smiling because you just remembered something only the two of you would understand...

Then perhaps I need not say anything else.

You already understand the gift.