The 'rents

My parents are two people I am so grateful for. They have had such a huge impact on who I am, and God used them - non-believers - to teach me about Him.

As I've written in past posts, Dad was an academic. He apparently liked other things too, because I learned at Thanksgiving that he was a goalie in soccer during his younger years. But he was crazy-smart and skipped two grades in school, and went to the big city after growing up in a small village to stay with his uncle and get better schooling. He got his college degree and taught at Madras Christian College. I find that sort of fascinating because that's where he developed some of his feelings about Christians and "proselytizing" - he often doesn't want to be influenced in a "religious" manner. He taught me to be hard-working, he taught me to always strive for the best, and he taught me to think logically. He taught me to stand up for myself when others talked down to you (to the point of being condescending to them), he taught me to be decent (he rarely, if ever, swears), and he taught me that it was okay to want to learn.

Mom certainly cared about academics but she is the social creature in our family. She is so protective of her three daughters and always has pointed to us as the standard that all others should compare themselves to (this isn't always a good thing). She grew up in a family of seven, the third child, and sometimes was the one that always ended up taking care of her younger siblings. She was apparently quite a runner and has described herself like a gazelle when she ran short track events. She got a Masters degree in psychology, but I don't believe she has ever used that skill professionally. She taught me to love stories - we loved her stories when we were little - but she also loved her "stories" (Days of Our Lives) as an adult. She taught me about how easy it is to be mistaken about our own natures. She taught me to love crafts, she taught me about how easy it is to accept disrespect because she took it all the time from me, and she taught me about true servanthood. She never ate until we finished our meal.

Sometimes we as Christians look at our parents and find it easy to see the biblical virtues in them and we are grateful. Sometimes we look at the lack of biblical virtues in our parents and find it easy to try to be just the opposite of them. I certainly have done the latter, and I never did the former because I never saw their good qualities as "biblical." But I now see the complexity in my parents' personalities and realize that they were flawed with some wonderful, loving traits, that they shaped me irrevocably, and I realize that God providentially placed me in their care.