I got drafted in the last one in West Point, Nebraska, got drafted for the service and
I just started farming a year and a half before that for the guy that lives northeast of West
Point and I had to give that up.
So then I went to service, got inducted into service and I went to Missouri, got my eight
weeks training down there and then I come home, picked up my wife and we went to North
Carolina.
But I'm proud to be in there.
And that bugs me every time I see somebody, when they flag goes by, that does not salute.
That makes me mad.
And like I said, I enjoyed the service.
I'd go back if I had to.
Once you've been there, you won't let it up.
I think, I think Marlon and I wanted to always instill in our children a love for people
and a love to serve others.
The value for integrity and hard work and the value for faith, Paula and I made the
decision to live internationally because we felt it was a step of obedience to God.
Our hope was that in doing that, that our children would be exposed to diverse cultures.
We wanted them to learn that this world was so much bigger than they could ever realize.
When we moved overseas, I didn't know what effect it would have on our children.
I think probably the first time we came back home for a summer trip, I probably began to
realize what effect it was having on our children as I would see them interacting with their
cousins and with others here in the U.S.
Yeah, it was, I would say it was difficult to know that we had taken our children out
of a normal American upbringing.
They didn't grow up here and they grew up living overseas and so to come back to a country
that doesn't feel like your home, it must have even been tenfold for them compared to
what Marlon and I had to experience when we came back.
When I was growing up, coming back to the States in the summer was something that I
rarely looked forward to and it got worse as I got older.
Being home meant that I was failing to meet some set of expectations that were set for
me.
It meant pretending to miss a place that I had no connection with and it meant eating
spaghetti and pizza in the homes of strangers that wanted to hear a short highlight reel
of our adventures in the foreign land.
Problem was that foreign land was my home, it was all I knew.
And this place that I was expected to know, I was expected to connect with, I was nowhere
near ready to call that home.
It operated out of a code of conduct and a set of rules that I just couldn't understand.
Growing up on a farm here in America, there was a lot of pride.
There was pride in that each American farmer would provide the food and sustenance for
like 160 people around the world.
If you wanted to be a farmer and raise grain to support the food of your country, you had
to have the land to raise the grain and sell it.
You just, if you were going to work for somebody, you worked for a factory or something that
was going on in town, there wasn't too many farmers that hired help and that was not
any way to get ahead.
It was a way to get ahead, and yeah, and they wanted to raise their families on farms.
All of me's dad found this farm up there and that's where I started out.
We had nothing when we came out here.
We didn't have no money at all.
In fact, that went into this mancrawl and asked if I could get 300 gallons of gas and 300
gallons of diesel.
And the man says, when do you want it?
He said, well, I can't pay you right now.
We should don't worry about when you've got the money coming in.
That's a different world than it is today.
I think the things that we have been through has taught us a resiliency, maybe.
Sometimes when farming wasn't the greatest or sickness or loss or what have you.
And so there's a certain amount of resiliency and relying on one another.
But there's also, as you mentioned, we do have access to a lot.
It may be almost to the point of being somewhat spoiled because we do have a good life.
You know, we always talk about in Northern Idaho, we are very individualistic, you know,
and we are self-sufficient and kind of have this attitude about it.
I'll take care of myself.
Thank you very much.
I would say my identity is this.
And I think part of that is even more so a Western American culture because that's where
I grew up.
And so I identify a lot with rednecks because that's the people I grew up around.
Not that I would call myself a redneck.
Having the freedom to take care of ourselves.
I don't know, it's hard to put into words, but I mean it isn't like selfishly we just
take care of ourselves.
There's also, we've also always grown a surplus, you know, and shared with people at church
or shared with our neighbors or, you know, given stuff away.
Because being part of a community is important to us too.
What our parents did and what their parents did before them all has filtered down to the
path that our lives have taken.
And so what we've been exposed to and what we have participated in has molded us and
basically we're a product of everything that we've gone through.
Being associated as an American when I wasn't was hard.
Commonly Americans are the louder, arrogant and culturally insensitive nationality amongst
the expatriate community.
Every time something political happened I felt the need to apologize on behalf of America
because in their best attempts to help they weren't helping, they were hurting.
Americans often expected me to have a longing to go back to the homeland utopia and while
the novelty of real bacon and 50 different types of cereal at Walmart was appealing when
we come back in the summers, I never could understand what made people so proud of this country.
Because we homeschool, we get to study a lot about history and American history and I think
the values that are really important are freedom, liberty, but with those comes integrity and compassion.
To me it's all about freedom and the ability to have several different opinions and all of those
opinions are accepted and there's disagreements but in the end, normally it all comes out.
I think back of what the Constitution says, a lot of the freedoms are laid out right there.
Some of them are trying to be or was trying to be changed, I don't know if they are now,
and the freedom to be able to still go out and get game and to feed your family.
In American society, we are constantly striving for equality and respect and in rural America
you also still have these amazing values of community and care for one another and coming together.
So these are the things that make me proud to be an American today, that make me value our life in America.
Part of being American is having the freedom to choose but recognizing that with freedom of choice comes responsibility.
You can't selfishly choose without considering your neighbors and neighbors not just locally but neighbors around the world.
I think one of the things that makes America special is the fact that there is land here and people own land.
And I think as a landowner, it changes my perspective from someone who just owns a city lot.
I own a piece of property and I'm responsible before God and before all the people who come after me to take care of that land.
Not to abuse it and deplete it but to take care of it and make sure to keep the noxious weeds off of it and the timber and stuff taking care of it.
And so I think that's another part of what America is, that's its self-responsibility for what we are given.
You know, whether it's as a nation of America or whether it's my own family in our household, it's hospitality, it's welcoming, it's extending grace,
it's loving one another deeply and loving our fellow man and that's possible wherever we go.
And it's possible for us to extend that to whoever we come into contact with.
I was after the answer to the question what made people proud to be an American.
I thought that by answering that question, it would solve my internal struggle and give clarity to who I was as an American.
The narrative of America is one that speaks pride. You're a member of a country that wins wars and helps others.
You should be proud because your country has accomplished great things, look where we are.
However, on an individual day-to-day level, the people that make up this country, at least the people I interact with, it's not about that.
It's not about the political reputations and the military accomplishments that make this country special to them.
Home, when I grew up, was always Montana. It wasn't necessarily even a house.
We had family all over Montana and it felt like this whole state was my home. But now since I've spent the last 25 years in Idaho,
living on the family farm of my in-laws, I guess that feels more like home.
For me, it's the location of Idaho because that's always where I've been.
Home is family. Where our family is.
I can't feel like I've got two homes. I've got a heavenly home that I'm going to get to.
But home to me is home. Back home. Right home.
Place where we live?
Yeah, place where we live.
I have always connected growing up in the farming scene with being how you reap what you sow in the farm lifestyle
and how that is in our spiritual walk, our day-to-day walk with our jobs.
Home to me is where I can spend time with family and have everything else that's going on around me just melt away.
In college, you say home is where my car is.
I think these days, home is wherever we are when the family is all together.
And yeah, when we're together, we're relaxing and enjoying each other's company.
We're laughing together. We're playing together. We're sitting silently watching movies together. That's home.
Part of home is family and the way that I raise my family and the way that I work with my family,
the way that I lead my family are the ways that I see make me a good father, a good husband, and a good citizen.
And ideally, I guess I would like to think that those things carry over into others as well.
I guess that's what home is, is people to me. It's the people that helped create this place, this sense of belonging.
Well, in the same way that I said home used to be Montana, where my loved ones were and are or whatever,
I think it's possible to recreate home wherever you are.
And so, while yes, no one wants to be uprooted and no one wants to be taken from their home
and have their whole lives turned upside down or changed, I think it's completely possible to recreate home where you're at
and in the situation that you're in.
And I think we've tried to make home a place where you can be who you really are and you don't have to put on a face
and you don't have to act a certain way to get approval. You can be who you are and you're loved in spite of not being perfect.
For a decade, I've tried to distance myself from my American identity and in turn, my American family.
However, the longer I've been in this country, the more I've come to know this place as home.
I've had to reconstruct my meaning of home so that I could include America.
I did not know if I will ever truthfully be able to say that I'm proud to be an American, but I'm proud of my family.
My American identity is embedded in the strands of my family being American.
It has little or nothing to do with the way America gives liberty or freedom to others or even within the Second Amendment.
Other countries are free, but it is this country in which my family built their home and hence my home.
This is what makes me American.
