#or..................

1) My own concept of what distinguishes Found Family from Friendship (even while they overlap) is one of relational dynamics. Friendship can exist between any two individuals with something in common (even if it’s simply a desire to have a buddy) and those individuals can belong to a larger friendship circle (I’m thinking the Fellowship), whereas Found Family happens when a group of people not necessarily biologically related comes together to form what we’d think of as a family unit, with its relationships taking on the dynamics of honorary parent and child, brother and sister, aunts and uncles and cousins, etc., (I’m thinking more along the lines of what the Order of the Phoenix becomes to orphaned Harry, and how it exists largely because Harry is orphaned in the first place). God made the family and it exists for our benefit, but due to sin and living in a fallen world, it’s always imperfect and often broken or lost altogether. This is where “the body of Christ” is called to work together, being made up of God’s chosen and adopted family members. Honorary grandparents and aunties and cousins and siblings have factored so often (and for the most part positivity) in my life, in times and places where I didn’t have those figures in my own family tree. And sometimes it has even been a sweeter and more meaningful gift, because it was prompted by love with no sense of duty attached. These people are all my friends, yes, but their presence in my life and impact upon it did double-duty, in a sense, and in a way that differs from, say, hanging out with my peers for companionship and fun and shared interests and such. I think both Friendship and Found Family are great, and they often coexist, but they have slightly different meanings to me, and one isn’t simply a more intense form of the other.