Blog #13: Família.
June was a powerful month filled with inspiration to fuel my determination of living life fully. My dad had a successful operation after his biking accident and shortly after I was on my way to Brasil. I hadn’t been to Brasil in over two years, which meant I didn’t get to see my family for over two years. That’s brutal. Honestly, it felt selfish of me. How could I be a good grandson, nephew, cousin, uncle and ect… from 5000 miles away? To some traveling is a luxury. To me, it is a necessity. It is not something I can choose to do if I have the money, it is something that ultimately is a part of who I am. Especially as long as my family is there, which will be as long as I live. So it is something I must budget for, I must do, even if it means a short time, inconvenient or even if I really don’t want to. The older I get, the more I recognize the importance of family and how valuable it is to spend every moment I can with them.
I’ve come to realize the importance to stay in touch with your parents. My goal is to talk to them daily. Not because I feel entitled to because they raised me. Not because I feel that I won’t make it on the will if I don’t. Not even because I feel like I’d regret not spending time with them. Even though I also know I would. The true reason is because, my family holds a love and connection for me that is unparalleled to any other relationship I have. I don’t mean this love is perfect or great, but it is familial, which is priceless. The connection, although can remain complicated at times, hurtful at other times or scary, it is also unbreakable. Whether that is a good or bad thing, depends on the day, haha. When I went to Brasil this past time, I had the chance to go alone for the first time in my life without any family back home with me. It was a solo trip.
A few of the people I love
My family in Brasil, welcomed me with open arms. They all are some of the most selfless people I know.
My grandma, for starters, is the definition of a woman of courage, service, love and comfort. Whoever meets my grandma, can be certain they are never a stranger. No matter the language you speak, her love and care is universal. Her intentionality with the acts of service she takes brings abundant feelings of warmth. Regardless of the challenges she faces, she knows God will guide her through that and instead of burden others with those doubts and worries, she takes it upon herself to give it all to God. Which can be frustrating for her family to go through at times, but can also be recognized as admirable. She notices the small details, for example, if you eat more of one dish, you can be certain there will be a bigger platter tomorrow and it will be placed in front of where you normally sit. Her confidence in herself attracts so many new friendships who desire to grow that within themselves. One of my favorite things about her, are the stories she tells about me. She is able to convey a story with such simplicity and humor that allows me to listen to the same story time and time again and never run out of the desire to hear it once more. My grandma is quite incredible, I love her so much, and I desire to adopt a lot of the qualities she has so that I can share her influence with others. At the time of writing this, she is in the preparation of having an open heart surgery procedure in the coming days. Any prayers are welcomed and I trust that God will be through this entire process.
My grandpa on the other hand is an evident influence on my humor. Where I look up to my grandmother in her ability to bring warmth to a room with love and compassion I look up to my grandpa with humor. Humor is one of the most important characteristics in my life. It’s an area I am always intentionally developing and improving. If you know me well and I were to ask you my top 3 traits, if “funny” isn’t one of them, consider yourself a shell of a human. My grandpa’s brutality is unique in the cushioned world we live in. It’s necessary in the dark times we live in and somehow brings a dark light to the world that is necessary. I admire him so much for that and desire to grow that in my life.
The last person I’ll speak on is my uncle. These three people are who I spent the most time with, so they are who I chose to speak about. My uncle and I share a lot of similarities. We have a couple huge differences as well, but if you were to ignore those, I believe you couldn’t tell us apart. Wherever I go with my uncle in the hometown, he knows everyone. Everyone also knows him. If we go on a trip to the grocery store, you can be certain to run into at least 2-3 different people that have to say hi to him. It’s always a good interaction. But the magic behind this all is that from this initial interaction, he is able to make it into a conversation that gathers so much information about that person and on top of that, he’s able to share stories that are relevant to any kind of conversation he has. I’ve never met a conversationalist like my uncle unless I consider myself. For that reason, I know, I could listen to him talk all day. Which, I have, many times. I want to capture all his stories, the interactions he has with others and make it into a movie or a book. We’ll see what opportunities I get to do this, but I desire to have these skills from him.
What's Next?
God has given me the unique opportunity to go back to Brasil in August to spend time with my family. I am going to take this opportunity and for the first time ever, I am going to stay in Brasil for two months. There I will get the chance to soak in as much time with my family that I know now. My grandma has twenty-six siblings, so I will get to hopefully meet even more family. My goal while I’m there is to create memories with the people that have always supported me from afar and my hope is that I can support them in any way possible now since I have this opportunity.
On top of this, I am going to have the chance to understand more about my culture and where the other 50% of myself comes from. Whenever I go to Brasil, I find out so much about myself and I find out so much about the beautiful country of Brasil. I hope to immerse myself in this culture further. Work on my comprehension of the language and understand the economy. I want to get uncomfortable and experience this fully while I am there.
Finally, there are a couple things I would like to also work through while I am there. I have no idea what the incoming future holds, but I know whatever it does, I am going to learn a lot from it. I feel like I have been prepared for this my whole life, I trust that God is with me through all of this.
I am excited to share my journey and what will come of this. God has a lot of good in store, He always has. God is good.
You’ll be hearing from me again, but until then, stay classy! 🙂