Wrangler Dani

My Irish Catholic grandma really believed in family. She was very fond of telling me random details about the lives of fifth cousins who I had never and likely would never meet, and insisting that any number of indulgences or missteps were alright “because we’re family”. Such a tight bond is lovely to see in theory but hard to live with in reality, and I often felt the tension of “family above all else” as I moved to Texas and California and Oregon and Oxford and made little families as I went. I wondered if I was betraying this tight-knit family “back-home”, the one my grandma clung to so tightly. Was it OK to have little families along the way – people who gave me perspective and maturity in a new way?

I decided it was, and I’m glad I did. These little families are dear people who never took the place of my family back home, but who helped me appreciate them and mature into the woman I am today. These people  upheld me and nurtured me and were family to me when I didn’t know how much I needed them. I’m sure my family was quite glad and grateful they didn’t have to bear the brunt of helping Adolescent Dani or Roommate Dani or Super-Flirty Dani discover herself, that I had so many wonderful mentors and friends along the way, not just my poor beleagured parents.

The point is that family is not something you are thrown into, something cobbled together by chance genes and biology. You are not the victim of family if your biological family is crazy, nor are you the winner in a cosmic lottery if your family happens to be awesome. You are empowered to be, through the love of Christ, the creator and celebrator of family in its truest sense. I believe that family is created through hospitality and I’ve seen that lived out, as host and guest, inviter and invited.

Hospitality matters to me because I believe it’s close to the heart of God, and he welcomes us into his family even when we smell like a highschool locker room and fail to put dirty dishes in the sink. We are lousy houseguests at God’s family table – we are the perenially tardy brother or cheap uncle or slobby sister or snarky aunt – but we are welcomed, we are family, we are put up in the nice bedroom with clean sheets and told to stay awhile, given steaming hot cups of grace every morning and listened to gently when we screw up and fill tissues with snot on his nice leather couch, because we’re family.

Adoption has given me a front-row seat to the making on unconventional family and what faith looks like in the midst of it. I am discovering that the making of family can be found in the tidying of the house or the invite out to dinner or the cooking of breakfast for a guest – all I’m doing is moving the laundry pile or grinding coffee, and yet it means much more. It’s an act of service and love and sacrifice and hospitality that wrings out my insides and stirs up my selfishness in deep and profound ways. It gives me hope and optimism, it lightens my heart that someone would want to embark on this adventure with us, and hospitality is a way of showing my gratitude, both to God and to our community.

I’m so grateful for the family we have, biological and otherwise. I’m thankful for friends who let us drop in on them, who welcome us into their stories without fear. I want to give more, drop my guard more, be more generous and whole and hopeful. I want to be truly hospitable with all I have, not just when it’s convenient. I want my kids to grow up in a home that lets friends in like family, where they are welcome to explore and invite because we believe that relationships and hospitality matter deeply. I want to honor our parents and families with our whole hearts and minds, reminding our kids that wherever they come from and wherever they get to go, they’ll always have a family to come home to.