Influence 101

Often my running time, at least when I'm running by myself, ends up being really good thinking or praying time. The other day I was trudging through a one-hour run and, for some reason, got to thinking about all the different people who have influenced my life in various ways. There have been many... the first of whom were my parents and including church leaders, teachers, colleagues, friends, Virginia, my kids, and so many more. So, I decided I would spend some time over the next few weeks blogging about some of those folks.

The obvious place to begin is with my folks. You're saying, "Duh... everyone's parents are a major influence in their lives," and that's true... for good or ill. I have been blessed to have parents whose influence leaned way to the positive side, but even a lot of those areas are common to many healthy families. So, I decided to write about some things that may be more specific to our family.

As I was running that day I thought about one particular decision my parents made early in my life that had a huge impact on me growing up. The spring before I was 6 years old we left Oklahoma, following Route 66 as it wound a narrow ribbon of road toward California. My folks, my baby brother and I crawled into our 1954 (I think) Chevy towing a big, heavy homemade trailer with all our possessions and pulled out. I remember pulling away from my grandparents house in Roosevelt, and I remember crying a little.

We ended up in Santa Paula where my mom taught 6th grade English (or maybe it was called Core) and my dad worked first at a service station and later for an industrial supply company. Three years later we moved a few miles down the road to Oxnard where my mom taught high school and my brother and I spent most of our growing up years, even connecting up with a couple of Bean girls as life partners.

Not that Roosevelt would have been a bad place to grow up, but I cannot even think of all the ways my life would be different if my folks hadn't had the courage... hadn't taken a huge chance... hadn't totally pulled up stakes and made that move to California. Their spirit of adventure and a desire to put family and service to God first has had a huge impact on me. I didn't really think about it at the time, but our own move to California 3 years ago was at least partially empowered by the courage my parents had demonstrated almost 50 years before. Thanks, Mom and Dad, for your faith and your example!