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“The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another’s desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.” --Erma Bombeck
Everyone is part of a family, and whether you like it or not, it is something that you were born into. From the first breath you took, you were immediately part of a past, present and future of something more than just a name. You came into this world with more than just a set of lungs. Years of accomplishments, mistakes, affection, struggle, and so much more ran through your face before you were even on this planet for five minutes. You were born into a family. A family consisting of people who had never even met you until this point in time, yet they instantly loved you, and you knew they always would. 
Life is too short to take things for granted. I’m sure you’ve all heard that one before, but it’s true. It’s easy to take family for granted; as a matter of fact it’s hard not to take family for granted. At the end of the day, you know you’ll be going home to a fairly predictable home full of fairly predictable people who you have to put up with and vice versa. You can always count on someone to be occupying the bathroom when you need it, or hogging the television when your favorite show is on, you can even count on someone to have left you some cereal at the bottom of the box, but not even enough to fill half of a bowl. But at the same time you can always count on your family to be there for you when you need them, like when you were little and you had nightmares, your mom and dad would let you sleep in between, or when you couldn’t shoot a basket, your brother would make it for you and give you the credit. Families just have a way of helping each other out.
But no family is perfect. We all get in fights. We fight with our parents, and we fight with our brothers or sisters, it comes naturally. It may be a small fight, or a big fight; it can last for days, or five minutes. Its just one of those things you can count on to happen.
It’s very important to keep good family relations. Continuing traditions or starting new ones can help make strong family bonds. Simple occurrences like having dinner together, going out to a movie, or just sitting back and talking can make a difference in the way you and your family members view and treat one another. You may not always agree, but learning to value each other can make a world of a difference in developing those meaningful and rewarding relationships.
Always remember that love is thicker than blood. A family isn’t just who you swim in the same gene pool with; a family is who you can go to when times are tough, who cares about you and has had an impact in your life. Whether you recognize it or not, your family is made up of those who have made you who you are today. Everyone has their own story, and that’s what makes a family so great. Each one is different, yet so much the same. The great thing about family is that we can grow separately without growing apart. We can live our own lives and make our own mistakes but at the same time we can always go home.
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Family Matters