My Experience as Youth Pastor

So I was out of town and had planned ahead to get my blogs posted but blanked on getting one up for Monday. The good news is it is still Monday so I should be able to keep my plans to post every day except Sunday. I was out of town for my grandma's funeral and had a couple of interesting thoughts. My family lives up on a mountain in northern Alabama/Georgia. The mountain more or less straddles the state line.

Anyways, while visiting my family I came to a couple of conclusions. First, and most obviously, my family ain't right in the head. Sure every family has one but I think about 30 families are missing theirs. I should make myself clear that I include myself in this list albeit much less severely than the rest. There is something about the mountain that brings out the worst in them. I have some cousins that are actually quite normal. One in particular I hadn't seen in about 10 years. Her mom got all the crazy so her and her sister are pretty well normal. She pulled up in a nice newer Lexus and I pretty well didn't recognize her even when she gave me a hug and said "Good to see you Nicky the geek." She lives quite a ways away from the mountain but it didn't take long being up there on the mountain before a professional woman was posing for pictures with her mouth gapping open full of half chewed food. Her sister also lives quite a ways from the mountain and has a law degree and two different bars but not so much a job. The stories … oh the stories. These are the normal ones as far as my family goes. Like I said their mom got all the crazy so they are pretty well sane but coming up on the mountain makes them crazy. This is one of those things I think most people would have noticed in my family but I never really saw just how crazy they were until this weekend because we've never all been together at once. It is usually just a couple of my mom's siblings and their kids at a time. My mom has 12 brothers and sisters (13 counting her) and all the cousins makes for quite the impressive turn out. In the future I'll share some of the stories from my family. They are quite impressive.

My other realization is that all of my family has grown up. Pretty much all the cousins have kids of their own. Many of them have had kids for quite some time since on the mountain there are very few things a person can do for entertainment. This means they get into sex, drinking, and drugs at an early age and so become parents and grandparents at an early age. The kids thing isn't what makes me believe they have grown up. No it was the way they kept getting onto their kids for things we all did there are grandma's house when we were kids. I had just pulled up when my cousin "C" walks out yelling at her 7 year old boy for going up to the creek without telling her. I about fell over laughing when the chastised boy walked back into the house. I ask, "how many times did we wonder down to the creek growing up?" She said we never did that so young. Now I know I was no older than 9 when I remember going up to the creek with her and two of my other cousins and started dropping big rocks off the bridge onto a huge snake sunning down by the creek. I am 2 years older than "C" and so she couldn't have been older than 7 when we all wondered down to the creek that day by ourselves without telling anyone.

At some point they all grew up but I somehow avoided the worst of it. Sure I made a point to know where my kids were at all time and didn't let them near the crazy dogs and stuff but I also encouraged them to climb the trees and took them down to the creek and generally all the things my cousins were freaking out about their kids doing. Let's face it, we all did these things growing up and we survived. Sure being up on the mountain makes us even crazier but we survived. I figure I've grown up enough and my wife will keep my in check on the rest.