Two families you've got to meet

Now more than ever, I appreciate what it means to take a good, honest look at your family. And then, for whatever it is in its glory and challenges and smiles and jaws gritted in frustration, making a commitment to be the very best family you can be. I especially appreciate when that best family has room for all of the personalities and problems and possibilities of each person within it.

Maybe it is some of our hardest and most important work to look at the families we are in and commit to rising to the challenges together. The more families I meet through my work and play and neighborhoods and blogs and church and randomly while plying small children with overwhelmingly frosted seasonal cookies at Starbucks, the more I see that it doesn't matter at all who makes up that family or how they all landed together, but rather, how they choose to be and love together.

Perhaps the best of these lessons comes from the people I have the privilege of meeting on CarePages. I profile their journeys into -- and often, through -- life-changing illness and injury.  As a part of the profiles, I read their family websites, page through pictures and interview them. Inevitably, I hit send on my stories filled with inspiration and insights into how to live my own life a little more authentically, with a little more gratitude.

I'd love to introduce you to two families who have been through a lot in the last year -- the Greenbergs and the Knolls.

Both families faced medical crises suddenly and both relied on the strengths and gifts unique to their individual personalities and who they are together to stay focused, positive, hopeful and move every single day toward collective healing. They are amazingly articulate, funny, resourceful, humble, clever, centered and full of so much spirit.

Are these kinds of characteristics the cure for startling, serious illness? Of course not. But what I've also seen is that these characteristics seem to propel the person who is diagnosed forward while pulling their circle of loved ones in close. Thank God, for whatever reason, these families are thriving.

Today, Annie Greenberg, diagnosed this fall with sepsis following pneumonia, and Greg Knoll, diagnosed a year ago with a rare and unexpected cancer, are not just surviving but living well.

Families are not perfect or infallible -- we all know that. We all know that very well. But in the critical moments, when the change slams down or creeps upon us, I really believe that who we are impacts how we get through.

I hope you will take a moment to get to know the Greenbergs and the Knolls, even if you just peek in on the photos that radiate all kinds of good stuff I imagine we all want to incorporate or emphasize or encourage in the families we have, the families we are and the families we so want to be.

Things happen. And often, more quickly than we could ever be prepared for or anticipate. Maybe the gift that the Greenbergs and Knolls offer, the one that stands next to seeing exactly what it is we can survive, is that we have opportunities right here and right now to look closely at our own families. While we can be quiet, while the year is new, while we are healthy and have the chance, maybe now is the best time ever to take the honest look and redefine or redesign our families to get through the big stuff and the everydays.

It is hard work. Believe me, I know. But Annie's smile and the way Greg looks at his wife and daughters tells me it is all so worth it.