what it means to be family

It all went by so fast. I remember the first moment I arrived in Kansas. The nervous excitement that immediately pulled my eyes to the people I was looking for, even though I had never seen them before (it was that… or the fact that they were waving for me). Their smiles mirrored my anxiety. And so it began, a group of 14 strangers feeling the same uneasiness, making us an instant family, though we may have not known that at the time, (it takes some of us, like me, longer than others to figure these things out). though we were in essence “family,” I still felt alone, and yet not quite, wary of these people like I was wary of the tethers that held me to the high ropes course throughout orientation, the most brilliantly awkward two days of my life… But there I was and there they were, with a collective strength to hold me firm through the instability of my course. They were there for me when I wasn’t there for them, when I couldn’t take care of myself, when I said the worst things to tear them apart and when I just didn’t care. I remember the morning I realized they were my family… After a night of stalling in a gear I had been running in before Kairos, I had to go to these people I had been surrounded by for many months but had never really let into my life and I had to bear my soul. For a moment in time I was naked before them, and they wrapped me in a blanket of acceptance, mercy and forgiveness. They loved me; with all of the parts of me I hated so much, they love me. For this, I thank them. I love them. They are my family, holding me up on the wire I can’t balance on by myself. They are my fuel and my fire. They are my God’s-love tangible. In retrospect, there is not a doubt in my mind, considering what I did and said or didn’t do and didn’t say, that the only way they made it through with me was by the blessing of God’s love in and through them. In the beginning, we were all scared, we all thought we didn’t belong, but we had been put together, no doubt by God’s wise hand, and we grew together. I was sharpened by them as much as they were sharpened by me, if not more. For this, I thank you. Without your prayers and support, I would not have been able to walk this line with them. I would not have been able to work with them, sing with them, dance with them, laugh with them, cry with them and fall in love with them. God did an amazing work in all of us these last ten months and will continue to do so. He will never leave us nor forsake us. For this, I thank Him. So sing praise and raise a glass to the Great Physician, who never leaves us broken, but completes us in his name.