You are different from anyone else in the world. Your mother is a unique individual. Your father is not like anybody else. It is because all people are different that your family is different from any other family in the entire world.
We may think that identical twins look alike, yet if we look very closely, we will notice that they are not exactly the same. We may think that a family unit made up of a mother and a father with two children is much like any other family with a mother and a father and two children. If we look closer, we see that each parent brings with them varying attitudes into the new family they create. They may come together from similar backgrounds or sometimes from completely different cultures. Of course, it is likely that they each have divergent temperaments, personalities, and expectations for family life. All of these things lead to a fully dynamic family experience.
There may be other differences: some couples may marry at a young age and some people find a partner when they are older; some families with children are led by one parent because of death, separation, or divorce; some couples have no children, yet they consider themselves to be a family; some people have one child, while others have many children born to them. Many families adopt a child or several children. The child’s new parents take care of her or him and they love the child for the rest of their lives. Other families welcome foster children (those who cannot be cared for by their own parents, either over the short-term or a longer time) to live in their homes because they know that all children need a loving home in which to live. Sometimes, children will live with an aunt or an uncle, or maybe with grandparents. All of this diversity shows the ways in which families are different from each other.
Throughout their lives, parents are still learning about themselves and their hopes for the future. Sometimes two people choose to change their lives in different ways. This may mean that they decide to live apart. However, each one loves their children just as much as they ever did. Parents who no longer live together both still want to spend time with their children, and one way to do this is for the children to see one parent on weekends and the other parent during the week. It should be realized that when parents split up it is not because of anything that the children may have done. Whether your parents are pleased with you or angry with you, they will always love you.
The members of a family can include half-brothers and half-sisters or stepbrothers or stepsisters. Sometimes after parents split up, one of them meets someone else that they love and want to marry. That person will become a stepfather or stepmother to any children that the other person has. It takes time to get used to having a new parent and to enjoy being with them. When two people who already have children get married, their children become stepsisters or stepbrothers. After spending time together and living in the same household, they often become good playmates and friends. If this new couple then have a baby, he will be a half-brother or she will be a half-sister to the other children of the blended family.
When we talk about our family, we usually refer to the people who live with us. All of our relatives, such as cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, are part of our family. Whether they live in a separate place down the block or across town, or even far away from us in another part of Canada or in a foreign land, they are still part of our family. Not everyone knows all their grandparents (or sometimes other relatives too) because they are no longer alive. These family members are remembered in stories told about the good times when you were a baby or before you were born. Nowadays, it is wonderful for families that even those who live far away can both hear and see each other through the use of computer web-cams and other modern communication systems.
And throughout all of it shines God’s love.
ONE FAMILY
(prayer by John Johansen-Berg *)
People come and go in the market place;
they see others in different hues;
here there are black and white, indigenous and immigrant,
a rainbow people but truly together,
a people of one family.
We seek to bear each other’s burdens;
we seek to share each other’s joys;
we share our happiness and our sorrows;
why then do some seek to make us enemies?
We are one family, God’s people,
a rainbow people whose song is love.
* from Wisdom is Calling: an anthology of hope: an agenda for change. edited by Geoffrey Duncan.
(Norwich: Canterbury Press, 1999)
