Obviously, we have been thinking about adoption in our family a lot lately, and I’ve noticed that adoption is more common than many of us realize. In our last post, we mentioned our spiritual adoption as Christians, but there is another kind of adoption that is also very common.

I’m talking about marriage. When we meet someone, and fall in love, and eventually marry, we are in essence adopting them. Once our families are established we don’t seem to think about this much, but it is interesting to remember that married people are not related by blood at all. In fact, most of us don’t know and love our spouses from infancy, but we would label this relationship as the deepest and most important relationship of our lives.

Casey and I had a wonderful time last weekend with the Picker clan. One of Casey’s cousins was getting married, and the entire family came from all over the country to be with each other. As you can see in our family picture, there are a lot of us (and this is only one side of Casey’s family; the other side is as large or larger). The only person in this picture that I am blood related to is Caleb, who is sitting in my lap, but I have come to love the rest of this family very much. I didn’t meet any of them, even Casey, until I was eighteen years old, but from that very moment they have loved me and treated me as their own. They even shared their name with me. I guess you could say they adopted me.

This all got me thinking about how very few of the most important relationships in my life are blood relationships. Before my blood-family gets all up in arms over this, let me assure you that you all make the list. But there are many, many people that I love like family that are not blood-related to me at all, spiritual aunts and uncles, cousins, and brothers and sisters that I have loved for my entire life, not to mention my own sister and all of my wonderful in-laws. If I can have cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents, brothers and sisters, and even parents that aren’t blood relatives, my new son is going to fit right in! Maybe blood is a little over-rated anyway.