Q & A - #1 - "If you could do it all over again, what would you do differently, knowing what you know now?" ~ Brian Farrey @ Dispatches

I figured this as fitting a question as any to kick things off with considering I turn the big 28 years old today. January 30th. If 28 years hasn't taught me everything there is to know about life, then what in thermal underwear have I been doing all these years?

If I could do it all over again knowing what I know now, I would get to know my Grandpa Lura Lyle Stephens better. He went to be with Jesus last Christmas during finals week, and nothing has impacted my life more than attending his celebration memorial service. Grandpa was a good man. I knew this before, but I really know it now. The family devoted the end of the celebration to sharing stories about him, and it touched my soul hearing from all the different people he influenced during his time here on Earth.

Quite a few years before he died, Grandpa wrote his autobiography, which I had the pleasure of reading less than a year before that fated Christmas. He was saucy and stubborn, which I guess explains a lot about me. Heh! At one of his jobs, he taught himself the job of millwright for a lumber mill, working beneath the much older millwright at the time. When the millwright retired, they offered my 18-19-year-old Grandpa the job. He promptly insisted on earning the same wages that the older man had earned, and the foreman laughed at him. So Grandpa laughed back. One important thing to know about a millwright--the mill doesn't run without him. So Grandpa quit, and the mill shut down immediately. When they came groveling back to offer him a job, he turned them down. Ha!

I wish I'd talked with him more, gleened his wisdom, learned from his life, and "knew" him, but growing up, my grandparents were great people who opened their 5-acre ranch in Humboldt County for us to visit twice a year. When given the choice between taking off in youthful exploration of the back hills of redwood country and sitting inside talking with grandparents, I chose the adventure. Now looking back, making use of the time God gave me with that great man, my grandfather, is the one thing I wish I could do differently.

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I'll be answering one of these questions a day for as many questions as I have, so if you've got anything you wish you could know about me, ASK IT HERE.