Legacy

This photo was taken nearly 20 years ago; but this past week has been bittersweet, especially for my husband. His 88-year-old Mom completed her journey on this earth and began a new life in her heavenly home. There is still a lot to process and future decisions to be made; but we have continued to return to one thought in the last few days. As my mother-in-law was the last of her generation in the extended family where my husband spent his childhood and youth, he has come to realize that he is now part of the oldest generation for this family. I also experienced this when my own mother passed over four years ago: the end of one generation and the promotion of the next one to a new position. 

This realization can bring mixed feelings. Who you were is no longer who you are. Even though we have been adults for a very long time, it feels different when the last member of your parents’ generation passes on. Without any official assignment of duties, we and our siblings suddenly become the sole keepers of the family’s legacy. And as children sort through the things that are left behind by their parents, they instantly become responsible for what to keep and what parts of the family will carry forward to future generations. 

I couldn’t help but think about some of the family stories from the book of Genesis. Although Abraham’s sons Isaac and Ishmael lived completely separate lives and didn’t get along, they came together in Genesis 25:9 to bury their father when he died. The same was true for Isaac’s sons, Jacob and Esau, who also didn’t allow their deep differences to keep them from coming together in Genesis 35:29 to bury their father when he died. And, in Genesis 50:13 we see Joseph and his brothers (the ones who hated him so much they sold him) coming together and making the long journey back to Canaan from Egypt to properly bury their father Jacob in the same cave as Abraham and Isaac. While all of these stories reflect Old Testament customs and protocol, they also show us that each of these people valued upholding their parent’s wishes and understood the importance of the family’s legacy. 

Our 21^st-century Western culture doesn’t always approach things the same way as this. Legacy is now sometimes defined by the money left behind, the possessions inherited, or the stipulations of the deceased person’s last will and testament. But the legacy we leave is much more important than these types of things. It involves the kind of character we have and what we seek to instill into our children and our grandchildren. Our spiritual legacy is so much more important than the material things our heirs will someday have to sort through.

Building our legacy starts when we begin our adult lives and leave our parents’ home to start our own families. But there’s something unique about the timeframe of our lives when we become the oldest generation in our birth families. When parents pass on, we begin to be faced more directly with our own mortality and to think about the legacy we will leave behind. I am reminded of the lyrics to a song that Dan Fogelberg wrote about his own family many years ago: 

And the sons become the fathers

And their daughters will be wives

As the torch is passed from hand to hand

And we struggle through our lives

Though the generations wander, the lineage survives

And all of us, from dust to dust

We all become forefathers by and by. 

We are all heirs, and we will all become forefathers/ancestors. And each of us gets to decide what our legacy will be. It is never too late to make sure that it is something truly worth remembering.

Belated Birthday Thoughts

   

For most of my life, my birthday has involved predictable memories. My childhood celebrations were simple but meaningful, surrounded by family and designed to include my favorite foods (prepared homemade) and gifts that were chosen with love. This pattern continued throughout the time that my husband and I were raising our own family. But somewhere along the way, things changed. 

Due to the location of my husband’s work, many years ago we moved away from my extended family. I also don’t live near my own children or grandchildren. I used to have a lot more friends nearby as well, and I was heavily involved in church ministry. But moving from a small town to a big city, and with the onset of aging and the changes that go with that, my life has become much smaller. So when my birthday came around last week, my expectations were also small. 

However, along with a smaller life comes a greater appreciation for simpler things. It is easy to look with fondness on the past and be sad about what has changed; but the option is always available to choose to be thankful for what is good about the present. And so my otherwise uneventful birthday turned into a special day just by adjusting my focus. 

Here are some of the things that brought me joy that day: flowers from my husband; waking up to a video text of my four grands singing “Happy Birthday” before going to school; numerous messages, texts, and phone calls from friends and family; a beautiful, sunny day with a perfect 75 degree high temperature; a stunning view of mountains, as well as a few fall leaf colors, while driving near my home; my delicious free birthday slice picked up curbside from Cheesecake Factory; and a leisurely “walk” through two photo books with memories of my life from birth until my marriage. And, as a fulltime homemaker, I also enjoyed the absence of any work that day – no laundry, no cooking, and no dishes!

 

  

 

I was reminded that day of the words to one of my favorite contemporary worship songs: 

All my life You have been faithful

All my life You have been so, so good.

With every breath that I am able

I will sing of the goodness of God.

I am very thankful for the blessing of the childhood family that God placed me in so many years ago, as well as the family he has given to my husband and me. And I am very grateful for the past seasons of my life and the ministry opportunities that God gave me that helped to define who I was and what I did. But I can also recognize the goodness of God in this present season of my life and know that he is continuing to guide me even though “now” doesn’t look like “then”.

And I can’t wait to see what his faithfulness and goodness will bring to me as I continue to follow and trust him for the rest of my life! As long as I am able, I will sing of the goodness of God.  

Lasting Friendships

Over the weekend, my friends and I attended our 50^th high school reunion, posing again for a photo as we had fifty years earlier on our graduation night. Of course we don’t look the same as we did, but hopefully the resemblance is still detectable!

 

As I looked around the room at my reunion and talked to others from my class that I hadn’t seen in decades, I thought about why my two closest friends during high school and I have continued to remain friends throughout our lives. We didn’t follow identical paths after we left school, we don’t agree on everything, and we don’t see each other very often in person. In many ways, we have had vastly different life experiences from one another. 

But we have history and years of memories that no one else has been there for. We have always accepted each other as we are and learned and grown from each other’s varied experiences and beliefs. As we have shared life’s ups and downs through the years, our friendship has deepened beyond memories of high school shenanigans. Even though we each have had many other friends in our separate lives, we still feel at home when we are together and seek to maintain our original friendship. 

The past is where we started and what ties us to each other, despite our differences. But what has held our friendship together through the years is the choice to continue to connect with one another when we can and to keep supporting each other even as we live separate lives.

Social media has changed the meaning of the word “friend”; but true friends are deeper than the number of people who “like” our posts. They are the ones who stick close no matter what life brings. I know our trio has less future ahead of us than the years of our past; but I also know that we will not face it alone. Whatever may come, we will still be friends and walk together. And I am very grateful for that. 

The Seasons of Life

 

In many ways it doesn’t seem possible that it has been as long as it has. In other ways it is easy to believe that so much time has passed. Tomorrow will mark the 50^th anniversary of my graduation from high school!

 

It was a very cold and windy night as we sat on our school’s football field and waited to move our tassels. It was the day we had been looking forward to for many years. For some, it was bittersweet: high school was the pinnacle and would always be looked back on as the best time of their lives. But for most of my friends, graduation meant moving into the next phase of life and leaving childhood behind . . . and for many leaving our small town behind. After the ceremony, we attended the modest senior party planned by graduates and their parents at a hotel in a nearby city; and then we went our separate ways. 

There were reunions over the years, but many of the people on that football field never saw each other again. After twenty years of life, my core group of high school friends decided to start meeting annually for lunch . . . which we have continued for nearly thirty years; but there are so many others whose lives have never intersected with mine for fifty years.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

I think back to all the people I knew in high school, and I wish they could know me now. I think I’m a better person now and have matured, and my guess is that they have grown, too. I’m a college graduate, a wife, a mother, a grandmother, a writer, and a cancer survivor. I didn’t choose a career outside the home, but I have used my God-given gifts in church ministry all of my adult life. I have had struggles and difficulties that have threatened to undo me, but God has walked beside me through it all and given me a deeper faith and a unique perspective on what following him means. I suspect that many of my former classmates also have similar stories to tell that show resilience and hope in the face of life’s challenges. 

Personally, I would have liked to avoid some of my life experiences. Not all of them were pleasant, and part of me wishes that there had been less troubles and more peace. I am one who likes things to stay the same, so every change I have been through has been hard for me. But the fifty years since I launched into adulthood have taught me that every difficulty has helped to make me who I am today. Much of my life today looks like I was hoping for on that graduation night; but I didn’t foresee everything that I have experienced. However, the hard times have better molded my character than the easier ones as God has faithfully taught me and grown me along the way. So while I wish I could erase the mistakes I’ve made, I honestly wouldn’t change any of the difficult things I have experienced . . . because they have added a depth to me that was missing at my high school graduation. 

My youngest grandchild graduated from Kindergarten a couple weeks ago. He has so much of his life ahead of him still; and all he wants to do at this point in his life is get bigger and keep up with his older siblings. If he'd listen, I would tell him to try and enjoy every step along the way . . . because all of his life experiences are designed by God to build his character and to grow him into the type of man God wants him to be someday. He won’t be there yet when he graduates from high school in twelve years; but if he keeps walking with God he will be well on his way toward a lifetime of growth and continued maturity.

Life is full of changing seasons, and we can face them with joy and faith or with fear and worry. And who we become in the end will depend on which of those paths we choose.