#4: I am thankful for my family of origin.

I am the third child (second son) in a series of four. My father was a Southern Baptist preacher and my mother, a school teacher. I was raised in an atmosphere of faith, love, and learning. At times my father also worked bi-vocationally as a teacher. Education was high on the list of what was important, and so I learned to love school.

My parents encouraged me at every turn--when I showed an aptitude in music, they supported my "career" in band, purchasing a student trombone for me and hauling me to early/late practices, putting up with personal "practice" time when the house would be filled with out of tune, off-tempo workouts. They knew I loved music and paid for piano lessons several times (I'll post about this later).

They taught us all to love--even when we didn't want to. Many was the time when my younger brother and I would be raising our voices on the way to fist city and my Mom would call from down the hall where she was actually being productive, "Boys, are you fighting?" (which of course, we were) and in unison, we would call back, "No, we're just 'play' fighting." (which we were definitely NOT) The result of the conversation took the wind out of our sails and we were fast friends again.

Finally, faith has always been important to my family. So much so that it reaches back for generations on both sides of my family tree. For an example of the influence of the Christian faith on my families consider this: in previous generations there have been lay-preachers/evangelists on both sides. From my parents' generation: my father, my mom's brother, my father's brother-in-law have all been preachers. In my own generation: not only am I a preacher, but one of my cousins on Dad's side is a preacher, two of my cousins on mom's side (three if you count the lay-preacher), one of my cousins has served as a missionary with her husband, and the list goes on and on.

I am thankful for the family from which I come--they gave me a solid foundation in a variety of ways.