Prompt #8: “Was your family musical, athletic, bookish? What sorts of activities were encouraged in your household?”
While some families are hard-core music people or hard-core athletes–and the children have little choice but to follow that same path, our family wasn’t/isn’t hard-core about anything but Christ.
Following Him was very much an encouraged activity. Everything else was extra.
Not that music wasn’t a part of our household–it definitely was. All of the kids but me took piano lessons and many of them got quite good. A handful of us serve on the worship teams at their respective churches (I am not one of that handful.)
Grace has taken music the farthest, I suppose, lettering umpteen-zillion times in band, show choir, and choir. But even her involvement is more circumspect than that of many youngsters. Until her senior year, she participated in only one group at a time–band first, then girls’ show choir, then finally deciding to do both girls’ show choir and regular choir together.
So music, I suppose we could be almost considered a musical family.
Sports? Not so much.
Joshua did football and track for a year. I think Timothy ran track for a year or two as well. Other than that? Zip, zilch, zero.
A number of the youngers (all those younger than me, actually) played church league softball during the summer, but that’s about the extent of our athletic involvement.
Books?
Even books are a tricky one. Certainly Mom was a reader (as seen last week). And Dad was an information-junkie.
But does that mean we’re all bookworms? No, not really.
Half of us are tried and true bookworms–a couple of us not so much.
So…what was encouraged in our household?
We were encouraged to be curious, to ask questions, to articulate answers. Sometimes that took the form of reading, sometimes of writing, sometimes just discussing the issues of the day.
This curiosity has held through into our adult lives, where some of us are writers, some of us are scientists, some of us are simply thinkers.
We were encouraged to serve, to find what needs to be done and to do it, to glorify God by serving His body and the lost.
This commitment to service has translated into our adult lives, where many of us our highly involved with our local churches and where many of our professions (whether medicine or military or manual work) focus on service.
And we were encouraged to walk in relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
We were Jesus people. Church people.
Not athletes, readers, or musicians.
Christians.
I am overjoyed when I see that my siblings have not left Christianity as a “childhood activity”, but have continued on in their walks with Christ.
So tell me, what kinds of activities were encouraged in your household?