Foreign to Familiar

Greetings,


This week has been quite the week. From traveling to returning… the house is a mess. So it is shaping into a busy next week as well.


Today is my dad’s birthday. It’s a little hard to celebrate his birthday with the geographical distance. It’s challenging just to call and wish him a Happy Birthday with the 8 hour time change.


It’s days like today I really miss my family. I know at “home” my family is in “birthday” mode. There will be family, cards, cake, and food. The birthday cake “plate” will come out of the pantry, onto the table, and hold the birthday girl or boy’s favorite flavored cake. Everyone will sing Happy Birthday and my niece Kadence will think everyone is singing to her. She’ll know it’s Poppie’s birthday, but she loves the attention… and the cake.


Holidays make living aboard extremely hard. When I was a teenager… I could not wait to leave home. The small town living drove me crazy. Stuck in the middle of nowhere. Your entire family a bike ride away. Everyone knowing all your business all the time. My mother is 1 of 3 children and my father… well 1 of 12. And there are only a few stragglers, like me, who prefer to live past the county line. Christmas, Thanksgiving, and family reunions are rather larger.


My family loves it though. They enjoy living within a 2 mile radius of the extended family. The immediate family, well…. my parents, sister‘s family, and grandparents live in a triangle. Literally, from my sister’s house you can see what my dad is watching on television… (not hard…. either football or Fox News).


I always felt uncomfortable with the small town living. I felt out of place. For me, the world had more to offer…. and I needed to see it, feel it, breathe it. The area felt smothering to me. I wanted my own space. I just wanted to be away. And I just felt so different from everyone else. Small town living was stifling for me.


My own family felt foreign to me. My likes, dislikes, interest and desires were so different than anyone else. My desire to travel and experience new things. My view of life and what it had to offer. My ideas of what was acceptable and not. My longing for life outside the triangle. My fear that staying only exemplified my differences. I needed to find other surroundings that made me feel normal. Places that kept my attention and held my interest.


Yet, as I age and mature… more aging than maturing… I have come to realize my family may not be so different after all. They may have been normal and I just did not realize the similarities between them and myself.

No real simularities? My first car though, "thanks daddy"

... and the first car he ever worked on for me

For starters…my mother…. well, my mother…. has a calling for kids. My mother has the ability to begin, develop, grow, and create a thriving children’s ministry. Naturally, she is a teacher, but she loves kids. And now I see… her heart’s desire…. the unlovables. The kids without…. without “normal” parents…. without “normal” living conditions…. without all the “stuff” that society thrusts our way. Underprivileged kids is her strongest ministry. She too desired something outside the box…. To help kids society has labeled outside the box.


But enough about my mom (there's more)….it is NOT her birthday.



My dad.


My dad is a manly man. A mans man. He can build a house, fix a car, drive a tractor, just about anything you need daddy can do it. By profession he is a forest firefighter. And literally that’s what he does with our family. He puts out all our little fires.


“Daddy, the car’s got a flat tire.”


“Daddy, the toilet is stopped up.”


“Hey daddy, pool’s dirty.”



On and on we go with the request and complaints my dad had and comtinues to tend to. Tending to our daily little fires. My entire life my dad has been a firefighter. Even today, the smell of brush fire reminds me of him. Weird, but I am a smeller.














During the summer months when “out west” is burning he goes. Well, whenever Florida is not experiencing its own fires or hurricanes.


My dad travels quite a bit with his job. Fires and hurricanes send him all over the country. He is there to assist and give aid to the damaged regions. Here are a few pictures of Hurricane Ike, my dad just returned from the assisting the area.

Hurricane Ike

When I was a kid….I thought he had to go to all these places. But he did not. He volunteered. He chose to go to dangerous fires and disaster torn towns. Areas ridden with danger and need. Yeah, he gets overtime and financially it helps, but he went. He chose to help these people recover what little bit of “normalcy” these natural disasters left behind.




In Proverbs, it reads….

“Train a child in the way he should go,

And when he is old he will not turn from it.”

Proverbs 22:6 (NIV)

This verse explains the importance of parental instruction. Training or instruction in Biblical times was imparted primarily through conversation, example, and imitation. The parents were to teach and lead by example. It was not a class to take for the child or a lesson taught by the parent. It was a way of life. It was life. It was the interaction of daily activities that taught the kids Godly principles. All the kids had to do was pay attention.


I thought I was so different. But as I look back. Maybe I was not so different after all. Maybe … had I paid attention I would have noticed that my parents had the same desires I did. Desires a little different by other’s standards. Probably, the desires were instilled by them as I grew up.



What was so foreign to me now seems so familiar.


From Foreign to familiar. The same longing and love for people my parents share…. so do I. Helping people in need is something my parents just did. They did not have to teach me…. all I had to do is just watch. If some kids in the neighborhood did not have Christmas presents….. my parents bought them. If kids needed a ride to church….. they picked them up. It was something they just did. Period.


For as long as I can remember… my parents…. and grandparents for that matter, have always been caretakers for others. The family that seemed so foreign to me …. now I see the similarities…. I see the familiar. I see myself in them. I see my sister, Kasey, in them. She is following the example set by my mother. See loves the unlovable kids at church. I see my brother. Kayne, in them. He is so much like my dad. Hard exterior, but within has a giving and compassion for helping others in need.


From foreign to familiar. From outside the triangle to longing for a piece of the familiar. Today, my desire is to make the triangle a square. To be a part of the family I so very much miss. To be able to sit at Kasey’s house and make fun of my dads very large TV across the backyard. To be near the family I thought … I was so far away. To be able to sing Happy Birthday and watch Kadence think the world revolves around her. (which it does… or at least until the new baby brother comes)


So today…


“Happy Birthday daddy!”


“And thank you and momma for showing me how to love the unlovable and care for those in need.”


“Thank you for helping those outside societies “normal” parameters, even if I did not see it then.”


“Thank you for teaching by leading.”



For those of you who are parents…. read Proverbs, let it sink in, understand that your children are your responsibility. It’s a directive by God. But realize that us kids… we do learn by example. Even if we do not know it!




Blessings,


Kristie