A Short Break

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Ok, here's the thing. This was supposed to go up 2 weeks ago, halfway between Mother's Day and Father's Day, but I hadn't quite finished it yet. But now, completed, here it is!

I received the greatest compliment of my life when, during a Campus Ambassadors Bible study at Chemeketa Community College, the study leader told me I sounded like a Bob/Brenda hybrid. He said something along the lines of “you think like your dad and love like your mom” and that just made my day. The study leader knew my parents well: he’d mentored them during their own college years, and here he was, twenty years later, with Bob and Brenda DeVyldere’s daughter in another study of his.

You all know what question I want you to ask. “why is this the greatest compliment you’ve ever received?” And here’s the canned but very true answer: because my parents are awesome! No, seriously, guys, the two people I aspire to be like most in my life are my parents. And again you ask, because you know I want you to, “why do you want to be like your parents?” And I am more than happy to tell you all about it! So sit quietly, nod politely, and keep that frozen, disinterested smile while I tell you all about the two most influential people in my life.

We’ll start with Mom. Brenda Marie Kisor DeVyldere has a heart the size of Alaska and as warm as Hawaii. I don’t think I’ve ever met a person she hasn’t liked, or learned to like. She has a compassion for the elderly and very young that would match a saint’s and an easy, friendly personality. Mom taught me for the majority of my elementary and secondary education, only delegating a few subjects to other sources like home school groups and the aforementioned community college. She never tried to drag me away from the math and sciences I wanted to pursue, even though those weren’t her strong points. She always told me right up front what would be required for me to reach my dreams—not to discourage me but to make sure I knew what I got myself into, and so I could prepare. I used to get so frustrated with her yearly attempt at scheduling our home school. Every September we sat down and blocked out hourly and daily schedules for ourselves, and set up the best intentions to stick to them. But by the end of the first week we’d rearranged things to a more liquid state to account for whim and house cleaning flurries. Eventually I just gave up and told Mom that it wasn’t worth doing because we never stuck to the schedules. Now? At the start of each college semester I draw up a schedule. Yep, Mom, you were right. I see what you were doing. A schedule isn’t intended to keep you on task. It’s supposed to show you how much time you’re occupied each day, when you have slots for homework, and how much free time you (don’t) have.
I used to get frustrated by how picky Mom would be about house cleaning. She wasn’t a neat-freak by any stretch of the imagination, but she did want things neat, clean, and made so frequently. I thought this was her way of controlling yet a little bit more of my life. But no…Mom’s actually pretty chill about me and my time. When friends come over she’ll tell us what’s in the refrigerator, what she’s got planned for dinner, and hands us the carte blanche to the day. She’s never, to my memory, set a curfew for me, except when we were expecting company, and rarely asked where I was going. When she did ask she was merely curious, not “checking up” on me. She knew me better than I thought. Mom could tell she and Dad had raised me to be too practical to go out drinking or goofing off. About the most trouble I would get into was sitting in my best friend’s car eating a McD’s apple pie sometime around 10:30 at night. Yeah, we really knew how to party 
Mom taught me to ask questions. Not to question, but to ask. There’s a difference. The kind of questions Mom taught me to ask involved obligation and expectation: what was I required to do to attain X? What should I wear? How long would Y last? Who would be there? When did it start or end? These practical sorts of things you don’t learn in school I got used to asking because I listened to my mom ask them, or went through that wonderful experience of standing before my parents and asking for permission to do something but not being able to answer those questions. Mom taught me that to know things was crucial to courtesy, convenience, practicality, reliability…the list goes on and on. Knowledge is not just power. Knowledge is a survival tool. You need it, and Mom exemplified that. Understanding? That’s power. You can know everything in the world but it won’t do you squat unless you understand what you know. I inherited my mother’s empathic nature and put that to good use, as she did. You tell me something complicated and I’ll understand it because I understand you. Mom knows people inside and out. She’s not psychic, she just understands human nature and how to piece together someone’s character.
That skill she got from her relationship with Christ and studying His Word, and then she passed it on to me. Mom is one of my spiritual mentors. She’s not afraid to tell me when I’m walking in the wrong direction, but don’t think she’s judgmental. No, she’ll tell me lovingly that I’m on the wrong track, why it’s wrong, then tell me how to fix it, then help me fix it. She never backs down from her convictions, has a good reason(s) for every single one of them, and taught me to do/have the same.

Part 2: Dad
Bob J. DeVyldere is the most incredible man in my life. He is my father, and therefore by default my teacher, mentor, spiritual leader, example…the list goes on. He is an outdoorsman, when time permits, a CIO for the Secretary of the State of Oregon’s office, a husband, father of two, my friend and confidante. Dad’s got a sense of humor like no other, this wonderful mix of cynicism, mirth, and intellect. He’s efficient, strong-minded, rational, and compassionate. Not the greatest conversationalist in the world but I cherish the conversations we’ve had over all others. From him you can learn how to relandscape a yard, build a house, set up a wireless network with a satellite dish that hates rain in Oregon and make it work, and how to best represent Christ in the workplace. He knows things about peoples’ behaviors you can’t ever learn from a psych textbook. He’s the man I go to for counsel about my walk with Christ, my printer, or my relationships with friends. He has a sort of empathy bred from recognition of behavioral patterns filtered through a Biblical worldview that lends him a great perceptiveness that I have devoted considerable amount of time to learning and implementing in my own life. It was this talent he used to open my eyes, inspire me, show me what I could do. He showed me what I really wanted to do, what I wanted to be, what I loved doing. He conducted my early education in astronomy, and then showed me as I grew that technical communication was really my passion, my talent.

I want to love like my mother, and to think like my father because they have made our Heavenly Father their models. My greatest goal is to imitate Christ: my short term goal is to imitate my parents because they are an imperfect model of the Perfect God.