My name is Nathan Edward George English. It sounds like European royalty, doesn't it? I have one sibling, an older brother. His name is Patrick Robert Allen English. I've always wondered why my parents cursed my brother and I to the intense bullying associated with having two middle names (yes, kids find some pretty stupid things to bully each other over), so I recently inquired about it. My mother told me that my middle names are tributes to my great grandparents: my great grandfather Edward English on my Dad's side, and my great grandfather George Fry on my mother's side. My brother's middle names are tributes to my dad's dad whose name is Robert Allen English. Both of my parents grew up in the church and that's where my first name comes from: Nathan was the prophet that confronted King David after committing adultery with Bathsheba. I was never very fond of my name until I learned the significance of each individual name. I am very proud to carry the name of the Prophet that was able to take the moral high ground over King David and oversaw the anointing of Solomon as king, after David. More so, I am proud to carry the names of my great grandparents who are spoken so highly of by my relatives that were there to witness their lives. Additionally, I am proud to carry the name English because of the accomplishments of all the English's that I have had the pleasure to know.
My dad, Lance, has had a fairly unique experience. The son of an extremely devout Christian, my dad spent all of his years of primary education in private schools, a fact that was hidden from my brother and I until only a few years ago. After that, he attended classes at Shoreline Community College, where he met my mother. Though my mother was Christian, he fell away from the church and started to focus more on working. He spent the first few years after school working at various movie theatres and grocery stores and eventually settled as a carpenter. My mother, raised in a poorer family, was an attendant at public schools, graduating from Garfield High School before meeting my dad. She also worked at the grocery store, a food giant that, on literally the day that I was born became a QFC. She worked in that same building for 17 years. In that time, she married my dad and gave birth to my brother and I. A few years after I was born, my dad decided he wanted to be a part of something, so he joined the Seattle Seafair Pirates when my brother was 9 and I was 4. A few years after that, my mother decided she wanted to go back to school to become a Nurse. Unfortunately, my dad had broken his wrist and couldn't support two children and a wife in school as a carpenter. He got a new job as a salesman for Holland America Cruise Line, and we still can't get over the irony of a Pirate that sells cruises. My mother was finally able to go to school. when my brother and I were in our teens, she graduated and was able to support our family much better than before. However, around the ages of 10 and 15, my brother and I were very lonely with my dad very occupied with work and the pirates and my mother occupied with school. We were encouraged to play sports and do other extracurricular activities so that we could avoid paying for babysitters and other care takers. My brother didn't care for sports, but I really enjoyed them. I played football from 6th grade through high school, swam and pole vaulted all four years of high school. We also spent a lot more time with my Grandma; the same Grandma that was devoutly Christian and sent my dad to several private schools so he could educated "properly".
Being the sons of two people that were raised in the church, and the grandsons of the grandmother that we were, my brother and I saw the church a lot. My brother never liked it but I loved it. As soon as my brother summoned up the guts to tell my grandmother that he didn't like going to church, he did and, not without putting up a fight, she gave up on making him go. I on the other hand loved church. Sock puppets and singing worship songs excited me every Sunday morning. In 4th grade, I made the decision to be baptized. Looking back, it just felt like any other day: I don't think I recognized the commitment I had made. But at the time, it felt almost surreal. After I had graduated from the children's church into the church's youth group, I asked the children's pastor if I could volunteer with the kids. She made me wait a year so that I could "mature" but eventually she agreed and I was right back in children's church. I was helping to lead worship, teaching Sunday school classes, performing skits for the children, etc. My grandmother, and in fact many of the other elderly in the church, always told me that she thought, nay she knew, I would grow up to be a missionary or a pastor. Eventually, as high school came to a close and I prepared for my life in Spokane at Whitworth, I got into some moral disagreements with my church's newest children's pastor and youth pastor. I found myself in a situation where both of them asked me to step down as a Sunday school teacher. So 3 months before I was to leave for school, I left the church all together and have not been to a church service since then. For about two years now, I've adopted a sort of agnostic view of God that I'm very content with: If God exists and is just, he will recognize the good and evil I've done and will reward/punish me as necessary; additionally, I feel that he would recognize the experience I had in church and take that into consideration. I still am fairly confident in God's existence, but I am not inclined to go back to Church anytime soon.
I am the offspring of a godless pirate and a godly nurse. My brother and I grew up to be polar opposites. Being raised in Seattle, I've adopted a fairly liberal stance on most everything, though nearly all of my grandparents come from very conservative towns in Texas and North Carolina. My mother and father were a bookworm and a geek, respectively, in high school, and I was an athlete more than anything else. One would've expected me to follow a similar path to what they did, but here I am: An athletic build, a college student at a private university directly out of high school and a self proclaimed agnostic. I had a very unique experience and it shows in how I differ from my the rest of my family.
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