Parents

My parents arrived today as they normally do; spontaniously and unannounced. They just decided that it was time again to come see their son, well the only son that lives more than 3 blocks from them. My parents are now at the age that their topics of conversations revolve around new pacemakers and joints that wont work like they used too. However, when it comes to my parents they are also a good midwestern farm people so intermixed into these age-driven conversations are stories about how yesterday dad climbed a ladder and dropped a 85 foot tree that the neighbors said someone his age should never attempt to do. My mother is not far behind as she was lifting the logs onto the splitter. Mom turned 70 this year and Dad will turn 75 in December.

The foundations of who I am are surely built from their DNA and many of my instincts in ministry were surely trained by growing up as their son, in a rural Iowa town in a family that had very little money. This environment created in me the ability to seek out memories and meaning in the everyday moments of life. This instinct is in me as much as my instinct to breath.
I love my parents for everything they are and everything they are not. In many ways I have grown beyond most things they understand, I have learned things that they never knew were to be learned and I have gone places that they dont know exist even today except through my stories. Yet, sometimes when I tuck my son into bed and listen to myself ask him about his day I hear my parents in my words. I am overwhelmed with memories . . . and I like it!