How To Live an Extraordinary Life

July 08, 2023

How To Live an Extraordinary Life

Hello, friends!

I know, it's been a while. I feel like I have so much to share with you right now... but at the time I took a break from this blog, it felt like all I had in me to talk about was my Dad.

It's amazing to me that my mind still - very often - has periods of not truly being able to grasp that he is gone. It's been just over a year now, and it is still difficult to process.

My Mom is still sharing pictures and stories on Facebook, and it is always a blessing - and a help in the healing process - for my sister and me. Beautiful stories. We had - and still have - a blessed life.

So before I blog again about life... homeschooling... summertime fun...

I've come here to share what I said at my Dad's funeral services - not for closure... not even for grieving's sake... but to honor him. We want everyone to know what kind of man he was, and perhaps, you will be encouraged.

Here it is... thank you for letting me share him with you...

(I've also shared some meaningful pictures at the end)

Be Blessed - Shan

...

Herbert Hayden Strozier Jr. was born on December 10, 1947 in West Monroe, Louisiana. His father was a peach farmer, and his mother was a homemaker - and an amazing seamstress. He joined two older sisters who called him "Bubba", and the name stayed with him his entire life.

From an early age, Bubba loved cars and trucks. Decades later, he would tell his grandchildren how he liked to sit under the porch as a little boy and play in the dirt with his truck, and how his favorite part about this was watching how the tires made the most perfect tracks in the dirt.

It didn't take long to realize he was good at figuring out how things worked. He would take things apart and put them back together... fix things that weren't working right. By age fifteen he was working part time after school at his friend's dad's auto shop.

As a young man, he served as an instructor of mechanics in the army reserves until 1973 - the same year he met a certain young lady with long dark hair, at Lake Darbonne. He skied right up to her and impressed her enough to get her name, and eventually tracked down her phone number.

Before long, he married Susan - he often called her Suzie - and they began a lifetime of adventures. One daughter came along, and then another. One had brown hair and the other blonde. They both had his blue eyes.

If he was ever disappointed that he didn't have a little boy, he never showed it. I guess he figured girls could go fishing... and hunting... and learn to shoot... and drive 3-wheelers... and go camping... and swim in creeks... and help build things.

When the time came for his oldest daughter to learn how to drive, he did what you would imagine Bubba Strozier to do - he found an old 1978 5-speed Corolla with a missing finder, fixed the engine, cut a practice track in the acre behind the house, and told her to let him know when she was good at driving it - then he would take her on the road. When she was confident enough to tell him she was good at driving that "track", he said, "oh yeah? Can you drive it in reverse?"

[and yes, he did require me to do that before he took me on the road]

Eventually those girls grew up and had families. His grandchildren called him Papa... another brown haired little girl, and then a blonde one... both with blue eyes. And when his first grandson came along, it was as if Bubba got to have a little boy after all. He got to do all the "firsts" again... fishing... hunting... shooting... building things...

Papa would eventually have 10 grandchildren, and to all of them he was a hero. He was so proud of every single one of them.

I think what made my Dad a hero was that he was extraordinary at living and ordinary life. He figured out what he was good at, and he stuck with it - for nearly 60 years. Even the day he passed away, he was in the driveway, helping a friend work on his car.

He married a woman and loved her the rest of his days.

He learned how to hunt and fish and grow gardens and raise chickens ... when things didn't go as planned, he'd pick it up and try again... when one variety of tomato wouldn't grow well, he'd try another.

He loved God with a whole heart, and loved his neighbor as himself.

At the end of 2020, Dad retired after working for Tony Lee for nearly 30 years. See - he found a good place to work, and he stayed with it until Tony closed the doors.

During the year and a half he was retired, he spent nearly every day of it with Mama. He worked in the garden... and of course never stopped fixing things for people - ... cars... trucks... golf carts... 4-wheelers... riding mowers... weed eaters... chain saws... generators...

How do you live an ordinary life in an extraordinary way? You get up every day and thank God for the sunrise... drink coffee on the front porch with your wife... love God with a whole heart - with a whole life - and truly life your neighbor as yourself. This is a life well lived.