Home

Standing atop a mountain overlooking what seems like just about the whole world, my mind began to drift. No it wasn't a day dream or some random ideas bouncing around my head with no purpose, rather it was much more than that. I began to contemplate the idea of home. There are the countless cliche' sayings.... "home is where the heart is" and many like that but that still didn't and doesn't seem to define home to me. When do you get to a place, set down, stretch out and in ultimate relaxation think "Now this is home"? Though the whole world may mock and scoff at your destination you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you are home. Standing in awe in the presence of the things that God created I felt the slightest hint of this feeling. With the sun completely hidden, the coolness of night bestowed fully upon me, I looked to the sky, I saw the stars dancing their lights on the mountains below, heard the faint noises of animals off in the distance and thought "my heart is at ease here god." yet somehow that was weird to me... maybe it was just the beauty or serenity, momentarily blinding my judgement. How can home be so far away from the ones you love? Yet again it happened, climbing to the top of a snow covered mountain, making my way to a rock overlooking a frozen lake, standing below peaks of mountains thrusting themselves upwards toward the sun, I sat staring at a background only God himself could have painted... and I was home. What I realized though, it wasn't the setting, the place, or the beauty. It was something much more than that, something so completely obvious that I looked right past it. Each time, scratch that, every time I had that feeling of "home" there remained a constant, the setting was different each time, the season, and even the emotion, but something was always there. FAMILY. I was once asked a question on a church trip to a Third Day concert, a college leader began to question me about my family size, the typical, "WoW there are 11( at the time, now its 12) kids in your family?" "No WAY!" and etc., after answering the typical awe filled question she asked a more serious even alarming question. She simply said, "With a family that large, do you feel like your parents aren't able to give you the attention you need, I mean how can two people give that many kids all of the attention they need to grow up correctly..?"  I was shocked... mad! Being the smart aleck 7th grader I was, the snotty answer I replied with was, "obviously you're parents didn't have enough attention to give you because if they did they would have taught you to not ask such rude questions." She knew she had obviously struck a nerve and turned away to again watch the concert. But it didn't end there for me, I was so upset it ruined my night, I even told my oldest brother about it... LOL. But what did come out of that exchange was something that at the time I thought was upsetting but now I realize is so importantly positive. I realized that my family was different. (duh stupid there are 11 of you) I had always known the size caused us to be different, but I figured myself to be a normal kid in a different sized family, boy was I wrong. To prove how wrong I came up with a list.... 1. My dad is a pastor (thats different) 2. My Mom is superwoman (not everyone has a super-hero as their mother) 3. Christ was always at the center of my family, not always by us kids choice, but mandated by superwoman and My dad. 4. We all basically loved each other.... that's different. 5. the first 9 of us were boys... ok I'll stop the list because obviously you can see that my family is, lets say "unique". You can see why I was upset at the time, a 7th grade boy, going through some weird change had just been told basically he was weird, again BOY WAS I WRONG. The "differentness" of my family is something I wouldn't trade for all the money in the world, it's something I wish every person in this world could have experienced.... the "differentness" is home. No matter where it is, my heart is at ease when I am with my family. It could be in North Dakota, Colorado, Oklahoma, Michigan, or the ends of the earth, but if one of my siblings or my parents are there, then I am home. Home is where my family is, and that college leader couldn't have been more wrong, the love that came out of my home was more than abundant, after all my mom is SUPERWOMAN...