Choosing Family

"Friend In Heart"
A friend is someone
you adopt into the
family of your heart.
Close friends become
your chosen family.

This Christmas season, this poem was given to me as my Christmas gift. Because of the changes in my life recently and over the past year, this poem means a great deal to me. This Christmas Season I was challenged to go beyond my old patterns in my life and make some new decisions. Some of those new decisions included going beyond my fears and saying no to things I did not want to do anymore. I had to stop doing things for other people and stop trying to do things just because it may have made them happy or because it may have been a tradition that once was. I realized when given this challenge that over the years I have grown up, my beliefs have changed as I grew up, but a lot of my patterns had not because I was too afraid to stop traditions I no longer believed in, or went against things I now believed in. I had to go beyond that this season. I chose to spend Christmas with other families that had invited me into their homes for Christmas. Most of them were either old friends from high school or were friends I now call family from church. God gave us a bond that is made stronger by the Spirit He left here with us. Thank you God for the many blessings you gave me this season. Thank you most of all for the beautiful gift of a humble beginning of the baby Jesus who came to save the world. Thank you for choosing me as your family.