Completing Our Family

This year I decided to write posts for each of my siblings. I've published posts for my three oldest siblings and an extra that lived with us. There's only one more sibling to go. My big brother, Toby. I saved his for last because I wasn't sure how to write it at first. There are plenty of stories I could tell about him or things I've learned from him but I had a hard time settling on just one thing. Instead I decided to write about how he came to be my big brother.

For fourteen years I was the youngest of four children. Two brothers, one sister and me; the baby. We moved to Oregon, when I was twelve, and we became friends with several kids that lived in our area. Toby was one of them.

He lived with his parents a few houses down from our store and we all started hanging out a lot. Before long he had become like family. 

Somewhere along the line Toby's parents split up and that's when things started to change for him. He stayed with his dad at first but things weren't going so well. He tried moving up with his mom to Portland, Oregon but that didn't work out. For a period of time he lived with family friends but that didn't seem like the best solution. I don't remember now how everything came to be but my parents offered to let him live with us. 

I remember that I was happy that my friend, who was like my brother, would be in a stable and loving home. He'd bounced around a lot and this seemed great to my fourteen year old self. Looking back I can't imagine how hard it must have been for him. He wasn't living with family but had moved in with people who had a completely different family structure, lifestyle and rules then he was used to. He went from being an only child to one of five kids. And it wasn't just a normal home, Mom and Dad owned a store and Toby-like the rest of us- was expected to do his part in helping to run it. It was a time of huge adjustment for him.

Toby lived with us for over two years and he truly did become our fifth sibling. He was already my friend but he became my brother. He taught me that your family doesn't just come by blood but by choice and that families don't lose love when they add people in, the love multiplies. It may not have always been easy but I believe that God put Toby in our family as much as for us as for him. My parents weren't expecting to have any more kids, and they certainly didn't expect to add one in at sixteen! But God knew better and Toby was given to us to complete our family in a way that we didn't even know was needed.

Toby may have been one of the many teenagers that lived with us over the years, and some of the still call us family; but Toby is the one that still consistently joins us at family events. He's the only one that has truly adopted our whole family and all of us have adopted him.

Thanks Toby for allowing us to have input into your life and providing a unique perspective to our family. And thanks for completing our family, it would never be the same without you.