Though born in New Jersey, a fact which is usually met with incredulity, I was raised in the South. My brothers and I grew up in Decatur, Georgia. My great-grandfather on my father's side was Robert Lee Treadaway in Jacksonville, Alabama. He lived to be 94 years old and was named after Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general. We knew my great grandfather as "Uncle Bob."

It was his children (my grandmother, uncle and aunt) that had more to do with our nurturing and growing up, let alone our respective faith journeys, than anyone else. If there are deep abiding roots in us that have to do with the South, it was from their deep and true southern souls.

It remains a mystery as to how this happened with a father from New Jersey and a mother from Leicester, England. Thank God for my memories of time spent in Jacksonville, Alabama in the presence of these sure saints.

As a young boy, I was a Civil War buff counting as a true high point finding part of a canon shell at the sight of Chickamauga Battlefield. A few years ago, on the way to Pennsylvania for the Philadelphia furniture show, I came into Gettysburg at sunrise. Needless to say, it was a place of many thoughts and feelings.