Sometimes the best families are the ones God builds using unexpected pieces of our hearts.

And I realized it's kind of a metaphor for friendship in general- being willing to let someone see all your weaknesses and knowing they won't broadcast them to the world. Because life has a way of throwing things our way that aren't always pretty, and they can leave us vulnerable, hurting, and in desperate need of someone who will help us carry our burdens until we're safely on the other side.

A conscience that is forbidden to operate in the choice of goals for economic activity is not conscience in the sense in which any moralist, pagan or Christian, has every understood the term. And the family (which [Michael] Novak regards as vital to the spirit of democratic capitalism) is precisely the place where the noncapitalist values have to be learned, where one is not free to choose his company and where one is not free to pursue self-interest to the limit. Because capitalism pursues the opposite goals - freedom of each individual to choose and pursue his own ends to the limit of his power - the disintegration of marriage and family life is one of the obvious characteristics of advanced capitalist societies.

Family' is not just a biological word, it's an an operative one.

Some families are an odd melting pot of strangers with the occasional offering of obligation.

Since that night I have come to understand that sometimes the best families of all are those we create ourselves, the people we choose to be with.