My younger son, Richard, and his wife, Annette, who live in Maryland, have not had children of their own. So about three years ago, they took instruction on how to be foster parents. On completion of this education, they were entrusted with a three-week-old boy. They loved and parented and nurtured him for 14 months before the court transferred jurisdiction of the child to his maternal great aunt. Also resident with the great aunt was a seven-year-old sister. The court did not permit the parents of the children, for reasons I have never known, to have their own children.

Then, after a lapse of about three months, not only was the little one returned to my son and daughter-in-law but also his big sister. My kids are happy to have them both. This is the family they have always wanted and the family they will love dearly for however long they may have the children.

In another part of the country, the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, Brother Jerry Freeman, a Past Master of Composite Lodge, and his wife, Sally, also have their family. For the past 33 years, Jerry and Sally have cared for over 200 children, most of them medically fragile. In addition, they have two children of their own and two adopted children.

The Freemans and the Nahins love and honor their families. They devote their time, energies, and monies to raising someone else's kids. What the government gives them for support of the children doesn't begin to pay the bills. Richard and Annette happily subsidize their family, and Jerry and Sally, running a business of their own from their home, do likewise.

For those folks, the well-being of other people's children, children in need, children whose parents cannot take care of them, is an important part of their lives. It tires them, it restricts their own lives, but their love and dedication sustain them.

Sometimes, we think they are not as fortunate as we, Alice and I, have been. Sometimes we consider the drain upon Richard and Annette, Jerry and Sally, to be tremendous and unappreciated by anyone except, perhaps, the children themselves. And yet, somehow the love they give these kids transcends everything we natural parents can do for our own children. But then to the Freemans and Nahins, those kids are theirs for as long as they have them, until the pain of saying goodbye takes place, and, inevitably, it does.

There are all kinds of families, and I suppose Alice and I are the norm, but are our families any more important or meaningful than the extended foster families of our kids and the Freemans? In answer, I am reminded of a quotation from the Bible: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." (Matthew 25:40) Certainly, what the Freemans in California and the Nahins in Maryland are doing, they are doing as the work of the Great Creator, for their family is a part of the family of God.