What Makes a Family?

Posted By TheUniversalOne on April 2, 2011

The Family Within
by Christa A. Lamb
December 21, 2009

What is family? I thought I knew until I found the family I so desperately craved within my soul. The spirit (not blood) running through my veins has brought me the comfort of family; and brings me the love and acceptance of who I am and the love I share. I am a person of so much love. I cherish this quality found within my heart, but it is this same quality that can bring me so much pain. I expect more and often find I get less than the love I have to share. Those I get less from, I hope for more because they are the people I have often referred to as ‘family.’

Family, what is it? In worldly terms it is the family line we are born into and we can follow this line through generations –but does blood make family? Blood can be spilled. Blood can be given in compassion or taken in rage. Blood can give or take, but only in a worldly sense. A brother, a sister, a mother or father; they are all flesh and bone capable of being family –but are they always family? Family is of love. It is the foundation of love. It is the spirit meeting soul, transcending the world and bringing the heavens to earth in celebration. This is real family –and not all worldly families embrace the true family.

I am not going to pretend that a worldly family doesn’t matter, what I am going to say is that this worldly family is a lesson on what family truly is beyond the world. If we all had prefect families, how would we learn what family is? We would never know how to cherish the love, grow in love, and bless the love of family. I am blessed by the love I have found inside. I am blessed by the love I give to those who I have grown to embrace as family.

Once family is discovered through a desire for family to surround us, engulf us, and accept us, we discover that family is the giving and receiving of love. We cannot have a family if that family is not flowing in love –it is no longer family that surrounds us, but the reflection of what family could be in the mirror of hope. It does not matter how long you stare into that mirror, family will not be without the flowing of love. Without love; pain, anger, frustration, hurt, fear, sadness, jealous, resentment take hold and division follows, spreading out across the world. It hides behind the name family, but it can never replace the real family. The real family transcends the world –uniting and healing us in love.

I cherish my family. I cherish the love I give and receive. I embrace the acceptance I find inside. My family extends out beyond the illusion of the world. It is felt in the highest realms of life. My family is carried on the wind and seen in the stars. My family is the light in my heart and every time I share my love, I am sharing my family with the world. My family will never be flesh and blood, but it will be the love of the soul found in the spirit. If someone is a whole part of my family then they share in my joy, they share in my compassion, they share in my love and see through the eyes of my happiness –just as I do theirs. I will not put myself through pain; looking in to the mirror of my desire hoping for a miracle in the world. Miracles don’t come from the world. They come through the love we inject into the world. I can’t make a miracle without love –and I cannot force love on anyone.

I wish everyone who reads this to share in the love of family and to be a whole part of my family. I wish for everyone to give and receive in love so we can make a miracle on earth, so we can begin see each other in love, in acceptance, in a desire for family unity within the spirit we are all born of. I am one person with a family greater than my worldly pain. Yet, I wish for those born into my family tree, I wish they saw the true meaning of family: the love and acceptance we can give now. I wish they understood just how powerful the love of family really is beyond the lack of acceptance and the shallow thinking of the day.

Anyone can deny family, but not everyone can escape it. I am not denying my family, nor am I trying to escape it. I am only following my love toward the real truth of family, toward real acceptance, toward the flowing of love that I find surrounding me when I look away from the reflection in the mirror. And when I look away I find my desire grows in what I know I can have. I want to be filled in loving acceptance. I want to look from horizon to horizon and see the love united in the eyes of spirit radiating in the light of love.

When I see what I want, I realize the truth -I have it. I see it. I embrace it and I will not look away from this light. I will not forget my family and I will ask and continue to ask for those caught within the world, staring at their mirror of hope, wondering why this worldly family causes them so much pain –I would ask for them to turn away from what the desire in that mirror and embrace the love in this message. I would ask them to remember that family is not of the world, but brought into the world through the love we give. Family is the acceptance we find inside that we extend to others. Family is the love we feel and the love we wrap around the shoulders of others when they are caught in the chill of pain. Family is opening the doors of love for all who walk through and give in that love. Family is what we are when we are one in love. Anything less fades with the world, so do not hold on to it. Release the pain in spirit of love –and feel your soul embraced by family, feel the love I am giving you now. Whoever reads this, I love you and I am your family.

God bless all of you.

Love,
Christa