Family! With out it your life will drain away.

The third note of the fifteen Christmas Notes from my book, I would like to write about this month is "Family".
I once went to a home in a nearby town to work on a tub drain. The home owner was complaining about how the tub would not hold water very long because of a slow leak around the bottom drain. As always, when I am on the job I struck up a polite conversation with the man. This was unlike any conversation I had had with other customers. The man only gave short half-hearted answers to my questions. I could tell he did not trust me and was irritated that I was in his home, which was strange considering he called me. Furthermore, I could tell I was not the only one he had treated like this. Turns out this man had left home when he was a teenager to get away from his over-protective parents. He never married, "There was no way I was going to let some female run my life for me," was the reason he gave me. And I assumed that when he asked me, "How many brats do you have at home?" that meant he did not like children either. Having a family was of no importance and of no use to him.  As I sat there trying to find something of interest and positive that I could talk with him about for the remainder of my work, again and again he would say something to kill the conversation. Finally I gave up and he, seeing he had satisfyingly dampened the mood, went into the other room while I worked on the tub.
Focusing on the job at hand I was there to do I could not help but think that this mans life was a lot like the drain I was fixing. While this man had found great success and accumulated great wealth during his life, some how living in this big house all buy himself with no one to share it with seemed the opposite of happiness to me. He had let everything I cherish in my life go down the drain, and now because he had opened the drain so many times to let those important things out he had ruined his drain and now there was no hope of holding happiness for him, it just leaked out as fast as it came in.
I can not imagine a life without the parents I have had, my wife, and our children. Basically, that equals a life without love and happiness for me. I would be the first to admit that having a family is not easy and life does not go smooth just because you have a family.  In fact in most cases families are where we are first introduced to sickness, pain, disappointments, anger, mistrust, and death. But on the other hand it is in the family that we are also introduced to those qualities that hopefully out weigh the bad. Some of these being peace, joy, happiness, love, respect, faith, healing, success, trust, and life. These positive traits are what this man had never really truly experienced, and because of his lack of family he will most likely die never having really lived life at all. Some times like in the situation of Max in my book Christmas Notes we have to be reminded of what a family brings in to our lives. It will be interesting to see the reaction of readers as they reed book two when they learn of how max is faced with loosing everything he holds dear......... his family.
Thank you for fallowing me an this blog.
May we all enjoy are families this new year.

Copy write January 4th 2012 by Clint G Cox