The Metamorphosis, or, How My Smelly and Annoying Brother Turned Awesome

I can remember a time when I didn't like having brothers. Like that one time when I pushed Matt (pictured on left) down the stairs. When he punched me at the Olive Garden. When Ryan and I got in knock-down, drag-out fights, like most siblings do. There were stormy times in our past.

But in recent years, I've been discovering just how great it is to have two brothers. Maybe it's the fact that I'm safely positioned 8 hours away from them while at school. More likely, though, it's that I've been able to watch them mature and that's the coolest thing in the world.

In this particular entry, I'm focusing on Ryan since he's making a huge and pivotal decision today and he's been especially in my thoughts and prayers over the past few days.

Ryan and I used to be very different. To me, he was always the jock, a specimen with superhuman amounts of energy and interests in mindnumbing things like football and basketball. He'd return from football practice with the world's smelliest helmet and pads and I was simply repulsed. He could care less about music and reading but was far more inclined to go outside and cause some sort of destruction with an axe or perhaps pelt birds with water balloons. We just didn't really relate.

Something happened over the past four years, though, as he entered college and his jock ways peeled away. He metamorphosized -- he started taking lunch breaks in the college library and devouring the newspaper. He spent less time on the football field and more time on the drumset (for better or for worse...)

Now he borrows my copies of Dostoevsky and Jane Eyre. I can buy him a 700-page historical biography as a birthday present -- and he'll totally finish it. His superhuman energy hasn't waned much, as evidence by his daily regimen of windsprints and weekly allotment of wood chopping, but our interests have converged. He is no longer the smelly, mindless jock to me, but a literature discussion partner, a thoughtful companion who graduates summa cum laude.

Ryan doesn't know it, but as he decides today where he will spend the next two years of his life ministering, he's about to metamorphosize even further. By entering another culture as a foreigner and taking time to observe and adopt their ways, his world is going to shake. Such a move as he is about to make will change him forever, make him more sympathetic yet more realistic, more thoughtful and more responsive.

If you remember, keep Ryan in your prayers today as he makes this big decision. I know God has big plans for my big brother, and I couldn't be more proud.