All of my life I’ve been compared to my dad.

It used to bother me.

In the time before I can even remember, people were saying I was his spitting image, and that continued throughout my childhood. If dad hadn’t still been alive, someone would have whispered that I was him, reborn. Some of my earliest memories are actually of being told how much I look like him.

We even had a similarity in posture. I remember when we went with some other family to some public event and everyone was snickering about how dad and I, seated side-by-side, were unconsciously doing the same arms-crossed, head tilted position.

As I grew older it wasn’t just a physical resemblance, but also things like our tendency to ask probing questions, playing devil’s advocate to encourage people to think more about or defend their ideas. Sometimes this looked like arguing, especially to mom, but I’m grateful that dad always challenged us to think through situations and ideas from several angles, and how he was able to model that you could argue against an idea without attacking them personally.

When I was young, both mom and dad were ordained as pastors (“officers”) in the Salvation Army, and until my early 20′s they were not just my parents but my own pastors as well. That can be tough for a pastor’s kid, and anyone who knows many “PK’s” knows that many of them really struggle to live up to the high expectations. I’m no exception to that, but I’m so grateful that mom and dad laid such a strong spiritual foundation, and provided such a great example, that my relationship with God has never fallen from its high priority position, even when I have fallen short myself.

We never really had much, growing up — contrary to popular belief, the majority of clergy are poor — but we knew we were very blessed in so many ways. Dad helped teach us about what was really important in life, like loving God and family; about treating people with respect, even when the rest of the world might see them as used up, broken, and worthless; and that happiness doesn’t come from having “stuff”.

Dad certainly wasn’t perfect, but I couldn’t have asked for a better example of the kind of dad I wanted to be for my own son.