The purpose of this blog is to be a sort of online journal for myself in order to remember those things which God tells me through His Word. I tend to be rather unmotivated to do those things which seem tedious. Perhaps by setting up a blog that must be updated regularly, I will be able to successfully do this journaling thing, which has been on my heart for some time. I'll try to give a brief summary of my life in these pages so that you know where I come from.
Now where to start... I suppose the most logical place is birth. I was born and raised in Three Rivers, MI. I was the firstborn of two boys to a young married couple, Tom and Cathy Castle. My father is half Korean on his mother's side. He has one brother who we don't see very much. His father died of a heart attack when he was about 14 years old. His mother re-married several years later to a very wealthy and nice business man who I came to know as my grandpa. Even though my grandpa had children and grandchildren of his own, he always treated us like we were his own blood. I loved him very much and watched him pass away just last summer. My brother and I are my grandmother's only grandchildren and she loves us dearly. We don't get to see her often, though, since she lives in Indiana.
My mother's side of the family is very large. She has six brothers, all of whom are married with children. Almost all of my cousins are younger than I, but they seem to be growing faster every time I see them. Simply stating this makes me feel old... My maternal grandmother married outside of her faith, but God is a restorer. After years of seemingly fruitless prayer, my maternal grandfather received Christ as his savior. He is now just as spiritually potent as she, if not more so. They are both extremely loving toward their grandchildren.
So yeah, I was born into a poor family, but one that quickly learned from their financial mistakes and worked harder than anyone else I know. My brother, Drake was born a year and a half later. I can remember holding my second brother, Lance Michael, when I was four years old, but he was a stillborn. We moved around Three Rivers several times through the years. Always to a better neighborhood, not necessarily to a better looking house. My parents were more than willing to renovate everywhere we went, increasing the property value so we could move to a nicer neighborhood.
My brother and I were home schooled growing up. I think it was the result of a few different reasons. 1) My mother did not want us to go to a non-Christian public school. 2) The only Christian school around was very strict even for kindergartners. I feel like the dress code that included a belt that I couldn't always undo in a timely manner may have played a part in me dropping out of school halfway through my first year. 3) My mother simply missed having me around. She didn't want to let go of her children so early.
So yes, I am a kindergarten drop-out. It's not that that is very embarrassing. I don't even remember much more than having nap time (which I didn't appreciate nearly as much as I should have) and sharing a blue crayon with a boy named Joseph, who must have been my best friend at the time (otherwise I wouldn't have done such a magnificently benevolent thing). It should be mentioned that I ran into Joseph some eight years later and asked him if he recalled the crayon. He so remembered it that he finished my question before it had left my mouth. Clearly it was something important in our lives somehow. I'm not sure what Joseph is doing these days or where he even is. This has been a fairly sad pattern in my life. I make friends, hang out with them while our lives happen to be intertwined, then drift away from them as soon as whatever coincidental glue happened to be holding our relationship together is suddenly removed from the equation.
My brother and I have always been close, though, at least until recently. I have always tried to set a good example for him, which has kept us both out of trouble. I fear that he sometimes saw that example as a score to try and beat. He definitely did not live in my shadow, though, as he has always been better than me at a great many things. I could not possibly love him more.
Back to the home-school topic for a little longer. My brother and I loved being home-schooled. We got to work at our own pace, have tons of vacation days when mom would take us to Kalamazoo to go shopping, and we still had several friends in the neighborhood. They were older boys who played with us as if we belonged with them and taught us how to play almost every sort of team sport that exists. Since we played against a higher age group, that often made us better at sports than others of our own age (especially Drake). It was a simple life of sleeping in, doing our daily homework, playing some video games, doing our paper route, and playing outside until dark.
It was during this time that my mother got a job as a school bus driver for the public schools. It fit nicely into our daily schedule, and she would have summers off. She used to have the naughtier kids sit up in the front right behind her so that she could watch them. It was as a result of this that we ended up meeting a pair of twin black boys, Caron and Daron. They came from a very poor family and were about a year younger than Drake, but quickly became our best friends. We did everything with them for a long time. They even went to church with us (we went to church at the time) and eventually received Christ as their saviors. Right now Caron has a daughter and Daron has a son. One is engaged to their baby's mother, and the other is recently single. Too much has changed since we played kickball together...
When I was 13, it was decided that we should go back to that Christian school I had left years before. I would be going into 9th grade and my brother to 6th. I learned a lot in fields that were previously relatively foreign to me. My writing skills were polished a bit, I learned how to type, learned a good deal of Spanish, gained a lot of head knowledge concerning the Bible, and realized how much I love math. All of my 14 classmates were very cool, and we had many good times. Unfortunately, I haven't seen a single one in a few years.
