Today, I'm thankful for my family...my Southern(ers) family

My momma may not know it, but I have several thousand brothers and sisters, many of whom I’ve never met. I didn’t even know they existed until college, and I wouldn’t recognize a few thousand of them if they knocked on my door, but if they sang a certain song on my doorstep, I’d welcome them in, give them my bed for the night, and slip them a twenty for gas when they need to go on their way.

When teenagers go off to college, all a parent can do is hope and pray that they’ve taught them right from wrong, taught them to care about other people, and taught them to own their behavior. When we’re college students, a lot of us are blessed to have a relatively normal family to go home to during semester breaks…but not all of my brothers and sisters did.

When I was in high school, I didn’t have any one college that I just had to go to. I wanted to study music, but there were several reputable music schools within a few hours drive of Atlanta. It wasn’t until I went to a summer camp in Jacksonville that I knew where I would spend the most critical years of my young adult life. Not the Jacksonville with the waves crashing on the beach, but the beautiful one. A three-day camp when I was a teenager substantially impacted the rest of my life:  it’s where I would meet my family.

This tiny little town in northeastern Alabama still holds a large piece of my heart. It gave me some of my best friends…it gave my husband…it gave me compassion for others….it gave me a bond to perfect strangers that will never be broken…it gave me the Marching Southerners.

Unless you’ve been a part of something so much bigger than yourself, I don’t know that I can do justice to this relationship with words. When I joined this family, I had no idea what it would mean to me. It would break my heart. It would put it back together. It would open past wounds, and introduce me to the friends that could heal them like no doctor could.  

When my husband was diagnosed with cancer, an entire town rallied behind us. They hosted benefit concerts, they sent cards, they visited, they prayed for us, and they stood by our sides while being scattered across the country. One of the parents of all of us siblings, if you will, is Dr. Bodiford.

I’m still working on my degree to become a teacher, and through this longer than I’d planned journey, I’ve come to realize how much this man does for his ‘children’. He’s not a professor…he’s a friend. He’s not the one that scolds you when you do wrong…he’s the one that would ask you to swing by the office just to chat for a while. He’s not that professor that salivates waiting for a student to fail because of their lack of effort…he’s the one giving an orphaned college student a place to live….an opportunity to attend college…a chance to meet their real families…a chance to succeed when the odds are stacked against them.

As you can tell from my other blog entries, I don’t do sentimental well. Humor is how I deal with things, and as a Southerner, I’ve been blessed with more funny, pleasant memories than some people have in a lifetime. But when you are part of such a large family, things happen that will make you cling to one another like never before. I met my best friend and brother, Michael, through the Marching Southerners…and I found out we’d lost him through the Southerners as well. With so many brothers and sisters, heart aches will come down the way.  Your brothers and sisters will suffer losses that will rock you to your core. Your brothers and sisters will go through struggles that you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. And sometimes, out of the blue, you will lose one of your brothers or sisters, and it will leave a hole in your heart that you’ll never refill.

But when those times come, the Southerners family does what it does best:  they drop what they’re doing, they bring it in, and they sing their song one more time. So, in this season of reflection and thanks, I am thankful to be a Southerner. In memory of M.B., A.L., H.D., H.S., A.R., K.F., and the many other Southerners that have flown home, it’s okay…because Southerners taught me that some glad morning, I, too, will fly away. 

www.marchingsoutherners.org