Family is everything. They are all you have left when you have nothing else. They are your rock, your home.
But sometimes, your family can be toxic, malnourishing, and the reason why your life may suck.
Let me start out by saying this: my mom is my hero and the absolute best person in the world; My dad is a kind, amazing, funny, silly man who makes my life 100000x better; And my sister is my best friend, my partner in crime, and the one person in this world I would give my life for. But aside from them, the rest of my family has disappointed me time and time again.
Luckily, we have these amazing gifts from Jesus called ‘friends.’
We are given a wonderful opportunity as humans to try to remedy our bad situations in life by being able to pick the people we surround ourselves with. They are, in my humble opinion, very deserving of the title of “family.”
I like to think that when God sees you have a less than ideal family, he sends us people to meet along our journey to make life worth living and suffering more bearable.
My mom always quoted a Mexican phrase (or at least I think its Mexican, for all I know it’s a Norse saying), “A shared pain is half a pain, a shared happiness is double happiness.”
I live 6 hours away from my mom and my dad, and 4 hours away from my sister. A bad day usually ends in an hour-long phone call with my mom or my sister, helping me feel better. But before that, it is also an afternoon with my best friends getting Amy’s Ice Cream after they rushed to my door. A good day ends in my mom cheering over the phone, my dad showing off something I’ve accomplished to his friends, or my sister using A LOT of emojis. But before that, it entails a hole in the wall restaurant dinner with my “family,” laughing at something dumb one of us did in the past.
Believe me when I say, choose your friends wisely. We can’t pick our family, but we can pick our “family.”