This week I will be posting some words on family. Feel free to interact if you like.

What is a family? It is, at its basic unit, a father, a mother, and children, living life together as best they can. My pocket American Heritage Dictionary defines it this way: “1. Parents and their children. 2. A group of persons related by blood or marriage. 3. Lineage; ancestry. . . .”

Many today would say that family—in the traditional sense—is under attack. Be that as it may, here is what I see as my family – a group of people (5 now) united together by love and decision, caring for one another on a level beyond the superficial. While even my five-year-old daughter could not express it in these words, I think that she understands their meaning.

I also have extended family, which goes now beyond grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins to include my brothers, sister, their spouses and children, and my own parents. Not to mention my Mother- and Father-by-law, as well as my wife’s sister and all their relations. When I married, my immediate family moved to the extended side (unless they were already there by marriage themselves), and I was privileged to add a number of new relations who claim me because of my relationship to my wife.

Therefore, family must be a living and growing thing. In it we have times of joy, times of sorrow, times of ease and times of strain. There will be pain as we grow, either by birth or by marriage, and at the same time these additions will bring insurmountable joy. Within family we love, we rib, we aggravate, and even anger, but within family we find ourselves accepted in spite of ourselves.

What is family to you?