Being D i f f e r e n t !

Being Different

Follow your passion. Be different. What’s the cost?  In Baggage Burdens. Martin Shopka, Uncle Mike and Joseph learn living a lonely life is the cost of being different. Can any passion really be worth it?

Martin Shopka’s loves breeding horses, but what makes him different is that he’s one of two older men who is not married. He is active in the church. He works on the father/son annual campout, but he has few close friends. Being lonely doesn’t bother him. At Daniel’s wedding he challenges the popular opinion among his males friends. He states that Jill, Joseph’s wife, really is a good wife.

Uncle Mike loves farming like that of many families in the Orthodox Community Church. His best friend is Thomas, his hired farm hand. Because Mike is born and raised outside of the church community, he isn’t really a part of the community. The depth of Mike’s loneliness comes to light in Mike’s will. He leaves two thirds of his land to Joseph, his nephew, who visited him on the farm a few times. The remaining third goes to Thomas who cared for Mike after his heart attack.

JOSEPH loves farming and is an excellent carpenter, but he too is an outsider. He is not trusted. Parents closely chaperone their daughters when he is near. Joseph confesses to Jill that his fear is that he’ll die alone like his Uncle Mike. Only when Joseph marries Jill, a girl also outside the religious community, is Joseph accepted in the church fellowship. Then he is a farming family man like the rest of the people.

Being you is not always easy.

At times a person may have to shelf their true nature to be accepted in a group.

What story can you tell to illustrate this situation?

To be a very good parent, is the wish of most parents. Jill’s wish is to be better than her own parents. In the next blog about Baggage Burdens. we’ll see see how Jill tries to achieve this goal?