{"id":20659,"date":"2017-10-09T00:10:41","date_gmt":"2017-10-09T07:10:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lccredding.com\/lcc\/?p=11752"},"modified":"2017-10-09T00:10:41","modified_gmt":"2017-10-09T07:10:41","slug":"october-9-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/2017\/10\/09\/october-9-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"October 9, 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cWhoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother.\u201d<\/span><\/em> Mark 3:35 (NET)<\/span><\/p>\n

The Real Aunt Dorothy<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

Everyone should have an Aunt Dorothy. She is loving, loyal, fun, caring, and thoughtful. You think, \u201cAhh, but not every family is blessed with an Aunt Dorothy; you can\u2019t just go and pick one, now can you?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Indeed, that\u2019s exactly what my mother did. The aunt that originally came in the family package had some important missing parts, like honesty, loyalty, and dependability. So my mother sought the Creator of families to find a replacement aunt for her children (so it doesn\u2019t sound like she is replacing her children). She looked at the godly women who were serving Christ alongside of her and invited them home to join our family for dinner and such. It didn\u2019t take long before Aunt Dorothy was a permanent part of our family.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now when people discover that Aunt Dorothy wasn\u2019t born a sister of my mother, they ask me one of several questions. \u201cIs she your REAL aunt?\u201d Well, she\u2019s not imaginary. We don\u2019t just set an empty chair at graduations, weddings, funerals, holidays, vacations and such. She really is in the photos, folks. So, yes, she really is my aunt.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWell, but is she your aunt by blood?\u201d they ask. Not my mother\u2019s blood, maybe, but she is by the blood of Christ, since she is a fellow believer. So, yes, through Jesus, she is my aunt by blood.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, she\u2019s not your biological aunt, right?\u201d All right, I will concede on that point. Not because I couldn\u2019t make a point of us all being descendants of Noah, but out of respect for Aunt Dorothy\u2019s other family. To honor the fact that they had her first, I will, when pushed, say that she is NOT my biological aunt.<\/span><\/p>\n

This much I know: no biological person could have been a truer sister to my mother, nor a more real aunt to my siblings and I. For more than four decades she has been there for us and with us. She laughs and cries with us. She plans and dreams with us. She works and plays with us. She remembers and forgives us. She is a gift from a loving God.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cJesus, I thank You for the family that You placed me in. I trust that it was for Your good purpose in my life. I beseech You to open my eyes to the blessing of family members You have given me whether by blood, or adopted from your Church body. Amen\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother.\u201d Mark 3:35 (NET) The Real Aunt Dorothy […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-women"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p92wjD-5nd","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20659\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}