One would think that growing up in a house with seven other people would be everything but lonely, however, in a culture that puts family last, it was quite the opposite.

My mom managed to somehow home school all of us. I’m not really sure how, but she managed to pull it off with pretty decent results. Being home schooled we were at home almost all of the time. At age 12 I was cooking dinner, doing laundry, and mowing the grass. Mix that in with basketball practice every day and my homework and I was a busy kid.

I didn’t have a ton of friends who went to public school, but I had enough. Friday night lights weren’t a foreign concept to me, and I spent a lot of evenings in the high school gym playing basketball with the varsity athletes. All in all between athletics and church I spent a fair amount of time with a variety of friends.

When I wasn’t running around hanging out at Wal-mart or playing sports, I was working at home with my family. Weekend projects were a regular occurrence in place of the movies or time spent “chilling” at Dairy Palace, the local 24/7 restaurant and popular hangout.

Yet despite having 5 siblings and both my parents around, I still found it easy to be lonely. With a ten year age gap between my eldest brother and I, and five years between Josiah and I, I felt rather alone. Couple that with the fact that I was the middle child and somehow had to be involved in everything, I felt lonely a lot.

But feelings can’t always be trusted, and one life lesson that I didn’t start learning until recently is that friends will come and go, but family is forever. I’ve always been relatively close to my siblings, but now I look back at my life and wonder why my siblings weren’t my best friends. Why did I always look outside my family for that comfort and closeness?

I guess some of it is a natural reaction. Many times our families can be a source of friction, frustration and pain, and we feel the need to voice those irritations to someone outside of that circle.

At some point most anyone will admit that they wish they had listened to their parents more. However, I think at this point in my life I wish that I not only listened to them more, but that I honored them more.

If I could go back in time I wouldn’t change much about my life, because it has made me who I am today. But given the opportunity I would go back and listen more, absorb more, and take to heart more of the wisdom that my parents and mentors tried so desperately to implore to me.

I’ve realized that sometimes that desire to find comfort and closeness outside of our families stems from our fear of the truth. It is motivated by our fear of being vulnerable and honest with the people who know us better than anyone.

Lucky for me, I’m learning this at a relatively young age, and hopefully it isn’t too late…