Tonight, I want to talk with you about a subject that is both uniquely individual and yet universal.

It is
deeply personal, but I think youll also find it relatable. Its something I hope all of you have, but many of
us take it for granted. And it has been the subject of sitcoms, reality shows, books, movies and more.
Can you guess what Im going to talk about?
Tonight, I want to talk about family.
Its an old adage that theres no such thing as a normal family (I bet you all can relate to that). Growing
up, I certainly felt that way about my family. For starters, there were eighteen of us. Thats right,
eighteen: sixteen children, two parents. But theres more. Fifteen of the sixteen Nelson kids were
adopted. But theres more. Fourteen out of the sixteen had disabilities. These ranged from the
conditions you may have heard about before Down Syndrome and Cerebral Palsy to the extremely
rare hydranencephaly (my sister Rose has no brain, only a brain stem) and Lowes Syndrome (a genetic
disease so rare that it only affects a few hundred boys in the entire world, my little brother Andrew
being one of them).
My parents never expected to have such a large family. They were initially foster care parents taking on
the most difficult of cases. But what would happen is the child would bond with the parent and the
parent would bond with the child, and my parents knew that, in certain cases, sending a child away
meant life in a group home at best or a mental institution at worst. It meant having no family. And thats
how my family came to be.
As you can imagine, all this made for a childhood that was somewhat - unusual. At times, it felt a bit like
living in a 24-hour acute care center. And as in any stressful environment, there were ups and downs.
We had our low spots we would lose two over the years and experience other scares but there were
also innumerable highs. I watched children who were stamped with zero expectations flourish when
given the chance. I saw the lame walk and the mute speak. We werent wealthy, but we were rich in
love and laughter. And sometimes you had no choice but to laugh, and laugh we did.
Now I wasnt blind as a child to the fact that my family was different. But having known nothing else,
there was nothing odd in my eyes about shutting off a feeding pump or hustling the oxygen when my
mother yelled for it. There was nothing strange about how our family pictures looked rather like an
image taken from a carefully crafted diversity infomercial. It would take the turmoil of adolescence for
my perspective to turn introspective, and to realize just how far from normal my family really was.
Being a typical teenager during those years, I was overjoyed at sixteen to experience one of the
pinnacles of that age: getting my drivers license. Ill never forget the moment when I walked in the
front door proudly declaring my right to the road. As I was doing so, my sister Sarah, who is only a few
months older than I am but who is a quadriplegic and has several other severe health conditions, came
trundling over in her electric wheelchair and posed a question. When am I going to get my license?
Now a sixteen year old guy does not show emotion. And he certainly does not do so in front of his
mother. I remember turning and walking into my room, her innocent question ringing in my ears and
clawing its way into my heart. Why did I get to drive and she didnt? Some questions have no answers.
As I headed off to college and career, I discovered that my family had left me with a set of principles
which fundamentally shape how I see the world. I want to share them with you today. First, my family
taught me that life, all life, is precious and should be treasured. Second, my family taught me that good
health is a gift and shouldnt be squandered, because there are too many who are born without it and
we all eventually lose it. And third, my family taught me that we should be mindful of how unique a time
we live in. Think about it for a moment. Where in the arc of human history could you find a situation
where white, black, Jew, Latino, disabled and not-disabled lived under one roof and called each other
one family and lived a life of relative plenty. Its extraordinary, and we shouldnt take it for granted. And
we should remember that there are still far too many places today where my family simply couldnt
exist; where the scourges of abject poverty and blatant discrimination are all too real. My family has
showed me that we should all do our part to ensure a world where the weak are not simply cast aside as
a nuisance to be ignored, or seen as someone elses problem to solve simply because they happen to
look or sound a little different from us. It is our problem too, and no one, nowhere, should be left to the
wayside. Because in the end, were all part of the same family the human family.