Howdy! And welcome to Buffalo Creek, a place to simply relax and dangle your feet in the water. My name is Paul O’Rear, and I will be your fishin’ partner!

About Me

I grew up in the small south Texas town of Alice, officially known as the “Hub City of Texas” (rather impressive, huh?). I graduated from Alice High School (home of the Fighting Coyotes!) in 1980, attended Texas A&M University in College Station for three semesters, and then embarked on what has become my life-long career: youth ministry. I currently serve as the youth minister for the College Street Church of Christ in Waxahachie, Texas.

I am married to Susan, a truly amazing woman (you can tell her I said that!). We were married in October 1982 at the tender ages of 18 (Susan) and 20 (me). We have been through a LOT together, and figure we might as well just go ahead and stick it out since we’ve come this far. We have been blessed with two wonderful children: a daughter Ashley, and a son Justin.

Ashley was born in Corpus Christi, Texas, while I was serving as youth minister to the Weber Road Church of Christ. She was a blonde-haired, hazel-eyed bundle of energy, and brought much joy to our lives. In March 1997, just a month shy of her tenth birthday, Ashley was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. She went through surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, and was cancer-free for about three years. In September of 2001, her cancer returned. Ashley died on November 24, 2001, at age 14. You can find out more about her at http://www.orear.com/ashley/index.php.

Justin was born in Dallas, after we moved to Waxahachie. He has been an absolute blessing to our lives. He is a thoughtful, loving, intelligent, sometimes hard-headed (comes by that honest!), well-mannered young man. I often find myself talking to God when I’m by myself, and thanking Him for blessing us with such a wonderful son. Justin plans to study Agricultural Education in college and become an Ag Teacher. I was hoping he would become a doctor or lawyer or something like that, so that he could shower his folks with wads of cash in our old age. So much for that dream! But seriously, I am so proud of him for wanting to pursue a career in which he can have a positive influence on the lives of young people.

About Buffalo Creek

Waxahachie is a one-time small town, about 30 miles south of Dallas, that is currently in the middle of a rather significant growth spurt. Its history runs deep and proud, and it is still quite a charming little not-so-little-any-more town. The name Waxahachie, according to local legend, is translated from the Native American tongue to mean “Buffalo Creek”. Hence, the name of this blog.

“On Buffalo Creek”, as the tag-line suggests, is a place to simply relax and dangle your feet in the water. This is a place to talk about life in general, or life in specific. I will be sharing some of my own pontifications on life, and would love to hear your thoughts in response.

(By the way, the picture in the masthead at the top of each page is a picture of Waxahachie Creek, which runs through our local city park. When I was initially setting up “On Buffalo Creek”, I thought it would be cool to have a picture of Waxahachie Creek itself, instead of just some generic creek picture that I downloaded off of the Internet. I went to the park with my camera, snapped a number of pictures at various locations along the creek, and was quite pleased to find that one of the pictures would work well as a masthead for this website.)

Living With a Broken Heart

One particular purpose for this blog is to provide a forum for me to share with you my ideas on grief and the grieving process. After Ashley died, Susan and I began discovering some things about our own personal grief experience that surprised us, because some of what we were experiencing didn’t fit with our own (or other people’s) pre-conceived ideas about what the grieving process is supposed to look like. As we sorted through it all, we uncovered some liberating truths that I have felt compelled to share with others.

I began committing to paper my thoughts and philosophies concerning grief, with the intent of some day publishing a book entitled, “Living With a Broken Heart”. Then, one day, almost out of the blue, my plans changed drastically. Rather than pursuing the traditional route of sharing my discoveries through a printed book, I decided to launch a blog — this blog — for the purpose of sharing, in small chunks, my thoughts on “Living With a Broken Heart”.

Beyond Grief

Though “Living With a Broken Heart” is one of the foundational premises of “On Buffalo Creek”, this blog is about so much more than just grieving. Through these posts, I intend to share with anyone who will listen, my thoughts concerning life in general as well as many specific areas of life. I hope you will find something here that will bless you. I hope you will share your own heart by responding to some of the posts. Together, we can learn to enjoy and appreciate the beauty of life in new and fascinating ways.

May God richly bless you and those whom you love.