Should everyone in my family match?

Does everyone in your family match?

Are everyone's eyes the same color?
Skin?
Hair?
Does everyone have the same body type? Tall, short, thin, stocky?

One of the amazing things about people is that we are all different.  There are thousands of differences between two humans-from the physical, to the emotional, mental, personality, etc.

We don't all match, and that is ok, and exactly the way we were created.

Sometimes people are nervous to leave sons intact if dad is not.  Or sometimes people are nervous to leave a son intact, if his brother(s) are not.

I struggled with that with my second son, and I am sick that I didn't push through those feelings and do some research on his behalf.  Instead, I decided that "matching" in the genital area was important.

But you know what? They don't match.

My oldest has blond hair, blue eyes, fair skin, and a thin, stick like build.  His interests include music, and baseball, and acting.

My second has dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin, and a stocky athletic build. His interests include sports of any and every kind.

These are the things you notice.  These are the things they notice.  Not their matching "parts"- But instead all the differences that are seen.  I don't know WHY I was so worried about anything else matching, when the creator of the universe made them different in all these other ways, and the differences are beautiful. (And it must be said-their creator also made their bodies, and I was the one that had altered my first son, so any not "matching" in that area was on my hands, not on my son's, and not on God's)

As for fathers and sons matching, all the same ideas apply.  Do the father and son have matching eyes? Hair? Skin? Build? Interests? If they didn't, would you change the child's hair to match the father? Would the father feel unable to love or relate to his son if their eyes didn't match? Of course not-my husband loves all our three boys infinitely, and in one way or another, he doesn't completely "match" any of them!

Furthermore, I think this goes without saying, but I'll put it out there anyway- The adult genitalia and the child/pre-pubescent genitalia look VERY different, for lots of reasons, even if they both are in the same intact or circumcised state.  I'm sure you know what I mean, without me being specific.  By the time that the father and son would have REMOTELY "matching" genitalia, they most likely will not be comparing.

As for children, I have to think about this.  What I did to my first two sons was wrong.  I am not going to wrong my third son, just so that they can all be together in my wrongness.  If my first son, or second, was missing a finger, or toe, or any other body part, I would not force my others to sacrifice their body part so that they could all match. Same goes here.

Some ask how I will explain the differences to my children, or if I will.  I do plan to.  I plan to tell my sons that I was wrong.  That the way their brother is is the way that they were born-created by God.  I plan to tell them that some people think that cutting off the foreskin is best, and that when we did that, we were doing it because it was what we thought was best at the time.  We will tell them that we were wrong, and that we are sorry. It is not a conversation that I want to have, but we have started, in small, age appropriate ways-ways that affirm our love for them, but also affirm that God's creation does not need altering. We will tell them more later.  It will be hard, but part of parenting is owning up to your mistakes, and that is what we plan to do.

Some things are hard to say. That doesn't mean they don't need to be said.