Appreciating Family

It’s amazing that it took moving over 7,000 miles away, living and working for 3½ years abroad in the Pacific to open my eyes to the importance of family. You know we talk about family and how important it is to spend time with those we love. But somewhere along the road of life’s busy highways…we forget. The bills start piling up. The job consumes most of our time. Activities with friends and even new acquaintances take precedence. Visits to see our parents and siblings become less frequent. Weeks, months, sometimes years go by and in the blink of an eye, our parents aged, the nieces and nephews are all grown up, and we’re left wondering where the time went.

For the past 3½ years I have been wrestling with this dilemma living literally, on the other side of the world.

It’s only been 4 weeks since we left Saipan and only 20 days since we’ve been back here in Dallas. There are a lot more cars and a lot more traffic now. Life seems even busier than before.

Yet, somehow in this hyper-speed merry-go-round that we call life, I’ve managed to hold on to what’s most important - family.

Today, I watched my 6 year old nephew practiced his piano lessons and I smiled and thought to myself, “It’s nice to be home.”