About the Author: #9

9. She’s an Incredible Daughter. If you haven’t yet guessed family is a big deal to me. I was fortunate to grow up in a family that absolutely loves each other. Don’t get me wrong we weren’t/aren’t perfect but we do love each other. It was important to me to see how much Kelli loves her family from the outset of our relationship. One of the ways this has played itself out is in her relationship with her mom. Just a few posts back I talked about the responsibility she took on to help with her sisters while her mom was finishing school, so in this post I wanted to highlight another period of time that speaks to her love for her Mom. A year and a half after Kel and I got married we were in Joplin where Kelli was working as an RN (despite having passed out during the interview) and I was finishing school. For a couple of years leading up to that time Kelli’s Mom had had increasingly sever hip issues (to be clear, I’m not talking about the struggle to figure out social media. The issues to which I am referring were actually related to her hips). Laura’s dad (Kelli’s grandpa) had had hip replacements and Laura’s sister has had several. So it runs in the family. As it became increasingly evident that Laura needed a hip replacement, so it did that someone would need to take care of her and Chloe because Laura would not be able to move, much less drive, for quite some time after such a surgery. Kelli and I talked about it and we made the decision for Kelli to move back to Muskogee for a couple of months and take care of her Mom and sister. For those of you wondering, here’s what we know: we know that Kelli’s commitment is to me above her mom and sisters and mine is to her above my parents and siblings. We also know that our commitment to Jesus and His Kingdom supersedes any desire to be close to family. However, we found ourselves in a position and a time in our lives where Kelli could help out and love on her family. I was taking 25 hrs of classes that semester and traveling to Tulsa every weekend for my YM position anyway. We knew that we would likely not be this close to family forever and may never again find ourselves in a position where we can be so readily available. So for a semester, Kelli and I jumped, yet again, into a long distance relationship. She would come to Tulsa on the weekends while I was there and then on Sunday or Monday we would part ways for another 5 days so that she could love her family in a practical way. She loves her family. And I love it.