Reflections?

For many years, since I was about 16 or 17, the autumn of each year would cause me to reflect and really to become consumed with the past. There has been something about the smell of defoliant, peanut dust, and the playing of high school football that caused me to look back, consider, and regret.

But not this year. This year I'm looking at what is now, and looking forward.


Why? There are probably many reasons. Having a 2 year old and looking at the road she has yet to walk, and how I'll get to walk it with her. Finally pursuing and gaining ministerial credentials.

Being tired of being regretful for things that are passed that I can do nothing about? Yep, that too.

But mostly, I'm hopeful.

Some would say "Dave, have you not seen the news? Do you not hear the constant barrage of how bad things are and that they are just going to get worse? Why be hopeful?"

I say "Why not be hopeful?"

Really, what good has having a downcast look at life done anyone? And I'm certainly not a positive confession type of person.

And I have seen the world. There are hurting people surrounding us. We have a great opportunity if only we would look outside of ourselves and stop focusing on our own lives. We all have much to give to other people. There are many whose lives would be altered simply by a kind word. And I have much more to give than a kind word, as do you.

I am hopeful because I see that while the great ship of society may never be turned around or saved from ultimate destruction, that the interaction of one heart to another may indeed turn around and save an individual.

Hope has driven out recrimination.

hey dave's blogging

Yeah it's been two years since I made a blog post. So sue me.

It's fairly evident if you've read many of my posts that this blog has centered around my relationship with my dad. Just yesterday, a memory bubbled to the top that is very emblematic of our relationship.

Daddy wasn't overly, outwardly emotional. Neither was he terribly demonstrative of his affection toward his family. He expressed his feelings but you had to know what to look for. 

When I left home for college, I actually cleaned my room and made my bed up before I left. These are two things I NEVER EVER DID. When I got back home the next weekend (you have heard Troy is a suitcase college?), Daddy was home alone. He sat down with me and made what I at first thought was an odd request. He said to me "When you leave Sunday don't make up your bed."  

For him, a made bed was a reminder that all his children were gone from home and had all become adults. (Little would he know that day that three years later I would move back in for three more years, thus further delaying the empty nest.)

He was communicating to me in the best way he knew how that he loved me and missed me. 

Would I have preferred him to have said so in explicit terms? Sure. But that wasn't his way.

Remembering this got me to thinking about our expectations of our parents.  How is it that we as children automatically have a clear picture of how we are supposed to be raised and who our parents are? It's amazing how perspective changes as we age. 

Newsflash, the best of parents are mostly just winging it. Trying to get by and do right by their children. And at the same time, they have their own issues that they deal with that we as children often know nothing about. It's too bad we can't have this revelation as we are growing up and living in our parents' homes.

I have learned over the years, despite my immature thoughts to the contrary, that I had a really good set of parents. Did everything always go the way I wanted? Nope, and that's a good thing.