Last week I attended a quarterly worship event called The Encounter that is hosted by my church and open to the community. It was my third time attending one of these, and each time I have been directly blessed by the worship itself and by revelation God has given me through His word and His people.

At the event last week, a friend shared a word that the Lord had put on his heart about family. He spoke of how the holidays can bring challenges in the area of family but challenged us to think instead of the blessings of our spiritual family.

It’s funny how a word sometimes hits you like a baseball to the head and other times has to marinate a bit to reach the depths of what God wants to say to you through it. I needed to marinate in my friend’s word, but once it soaked in later that night in the quiet of my home, it overwhelmed me to tears.

Over the course of the past year and a half, I watched the family I had nurtured and built with every fiber of my being splinter, shatter, and eventually disintegrate. The people were still alive, but the family unit we had all known was destroyed. It devastated every one of us in our own ways. As a mother, the loss felt utterly overwhelming.

Through God’s grace, I have started to heal, rebuild, and find great hope in the future. But I have struggled with the word “family.” I would see artwork in stores that I loved but didn’t buy because it had the word “family” in it. I would hear messages at church about family and wonder how they applied to me. I would watch other families that I know and love and would be convicted by twinges of jealousy at the simple fact that they were intact. During the holidays, I did feel a sense of loss and grief, realizing that parts of my 26-year family were missing from the table—some by choice, some by circumstance, and some just because other people probably cook a better turkey than me (actually Harris Teeter cooked my turkey, whoever he is, and it was pretty delicious, but I was a turkey-risk for sure!).

Titus has always had a special need to identify his family—naming us each one-by-one and seeking the reassurance that we belong to him. I have found this fascinating, knowing he is adopted, even though he has yet to fully understand what that word means. It’s as if God places a special appreciation for family in those who have been orphaned.

I think that must be sort of like what I felt on Thanksgiving—orphaned and grasping to figure out what now constitutes my family. And when my friend’s word fully soaked into my being late that Friday night, it left me weeping with joy. Because I think that deep down, I thought I would not have a true family again unless I risked another marriage one day (a highly unappealing prospect right now).

But God has repeatedly told me over the past nine months that He is my husband now and that He is faithful and trustworthy and honorable and just and that He stands ready to defend me, love me, cherish me, and fight all of my battles. And that all I have to do is stay still and praise him (thanks to worship artist Rita Springer for those last two truths).

And the revelation that I received through the Encounter was that I am—and actually have been for many, many years—in a very strong, intact family of believers. That family thankfully DOES include members of my immediate and extended family with whom I share bonds of blood and law and lifelong memories, but it is also a much broader family that encompasses my church family, my honorary sisters and daughters, spiritual mentors, authors and speakers who have written and spoken truths that have molded and shaped me, youth leaders and college professors and camp counselors and students who have poured into my children, and countless friends I have met in the various chapters of my life. Many of these people are very different from me—maybe their theology differs from mine or their skin is a different color or they live life a little differently than I do. Maybe they don’t live in my house or go to my particular church or even live in my state.

But when I cry out to God in the desert and wilderness places I described a couple of days ago, He nudges one of them to call, text, or pray for me. When I have a need that I see no resource for, He fills it through one of them. They have shed tears for and with me, spent money on me, given gifts to me, shared talents with me, spoken truth over me, broken bread with me, drunk countless cups of coffee with me, sat by hospital beds with me, counseled me, corrected me, encouraged me, forgiven me, lifted my arms for me when I was too weak to hold them up, and picked me up when I was just a pitiful little puddle on the floor. All with love. And they will do it again. And again. And again. And again. And He nudges me to do the same for them in return. And the more I heal and grow, the more He will entrust me to do for them.

My family.

“And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.’” (Matthew 12:49-50, ESV)