I've been thinking a lot about family...

How I don't really have that big, loud, everybody gets on each other's nerves, everybody knows everybody's business, laughing, annoying, loving kind of family. I've always kinda wanted that. I mean, it's not that I don't have a family outside of my parents and brother, I do. But my Mom's side is so tiny, no cousins, two uncles, and a Grandma who can have deep conversations about why you never end a sentence with a preposition or the writing styles of Jane Austen versus Lord Byron but won't bake brownies like other people's grandmas do(not that there's anything wrong with that!). And my Dad's side? Well. They're pretty much strangers, most of them. I mean, I have one Aunt and Uncle who live in Virginia Beach and they're great, but the rest of them live in Iran. I probably have about a thousand cousins over there (if you count first, second, and third cousins) that I've never met and who probably have no idea that I exist. But I'm okay with that. The idea of them is cool, but I don't really know if we would have much in common anyway. Not that that matters, it's just...well, I don't know. It's complicated. Iran is complicated. Family is complicated.
But, yeah. I've always kinda wondered what it would be like to be a part of a big, loud kind of family. And I'm hoping to marry into one, though I know it won't be the same. But I've also realized that for what I lack in family and connections by blood, God has blessed me abundantly in friendships. He's given me adoptive families. Mother-figures and fathers and sisters and brothers that I feel so at home with. And I'm so grateful for that. He has blessed me so richly with incredible people who've let me in, shared their lives with me, taught me so much, shown me how to be a woman, a wife, a mother. When I think about that, I know that He's given me all the family I need.