Family Trees

I recently read this question and it got the wheels rolling in my mind,

"If you could give yourself permission to be curious about your past, what would you want to know?"

Hello friends.

Happy June.

I never had the opportunity to meet my Maternal Grandmother.

I can recall a picture in my mind's eye of her slender and tall standing next to my uncle at his high school graduation.

I remember wishing I was as tall as she was and as refined as she looked in that picture.

She passed away when my oldest sister was an infant so many of us didn't get to know her.

But I've heard enough bits and pieces of her story to know that she was a very complicated woman with deep hurts from losing both of her parents in a car accident.

She was in an orphanage as a young girl (interesting story but both of my Grandmothers spent time in an orphanage) and was adopted by a family that couldn't have children.

Per my own Mother's testimony, my Grandmother was loved and enjoyed until this couple found that they WERE able to have their own child.

I can't even imagine losing both your parents, to begin again in a new family, to then feel like an outcast.

That's a lot of loss for a child to bear- some by accident and some by choice.

As only fate would have it, my Mother's Father remarried a kind woman that I grew to know and love as my "Grandma" until my Grandfather passed away and she decided that her previous family was her primary care and concern.

So in a sense, My own Mother was left just like her Mother was.

These are things I wish I knew more about, but my generation sits just inside of the new ways of "talking about your feelings," and my Mother's and Grandmother's generation knew no such privilege.

There were children to raise and dinner to get on the table.

And yet, everything, literally e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g in my entire being (go back and picture me clapping out every syllable in that word for emphasis) would much rather err on the side of saying way too much than not saying enough of what really matters.

Sometimes I wish I had reached out to my surrogate Grandmother in my teenage years and given her a good tongue-lashing about leaving us after so many Christmases where we had to watch her kiss weird collectible commemorative spoons we gifted her that had the picture of the Pope on them.

But then again, I haven't the slightest clue what kind of ghosts were in her closet either.

Growing up my Mom rarely talked about her Mother or even the hurt of losing another stand-in Mother.

And I have never, not even once ever heard her complain about her upbringing.

My Mom Sandra or Sandy with an "i" is the strongest woman I know.

She took out the trash while in labor with my brother so as not to miss "trash day."

She's beaten two rounds of two different types of cancer and I've only seen her cry one single solitary time.

It was when she received news that her Father had died.

I remember feeling terrible about not running to her to comfort her there in the kitchen but I couldn't take my eyes off of her eyes welling up with tears.

I'd never seen her like that and my teenage mind thought that if she was crying the world was for sure coming to an end.

Just yesterday over donuts I asked her how on earth she ended up with four kids that cry at the drop-of-the-hat.

She shrugged her shoulders and laughed.

There's one memory about my Mom's Mom that's burned into my mind.

When my husband took a Pastorate in upstate New York, I remember feeling compelled to paint the living room with two trees,

One on either side of the picture window.

When you spend over ten years in a two bedroom, 600 square foot home with 8 people and move into a 3 bedroom parsonage, you just can't stop the creative juices that you've saved for such a time from flowing.

I had a thing for silhouettes then, and still do, so I drew trees and made them come alive with shiny black paint.

I even added a little bird in the branches of each tree.

I felt so proud of these trees for some odd reason.

The paint had barely dried when my Mom and my sister came for a visit.

Their first time to our home and to New York in general.

She came in the front door, hugged us all, dropped her bag and followed me into the living room for her first official "house tour."

I can still see her stop for a minute right at the doorframe stunned for a moment.

She then told me that her Mother had painted almost identical trees in her kitchen as a girl.

Now I don't normally get the "Willies," but be assured that "Willies" were had by all that day.

How on earth do two totally different generations do the same thing worlds apart who would never even meet in this life?

I'll tell you how.

By being formed and framed by the very same generational ties.

I guess you could call them Family Trees.

(see what I did just there?)

My Mom had the most unique smile on her face tracing the trees with her hands.

And I had this artistic connection with a woman who would've never dreamed of a grand daughter following in her footsteps.

We all carry years upon years of stories deep in the roots of our Family trees and if we let them, they spill out of our hearts as time goes by.

2 Corinthians 3:2-3 says, "Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men:

 Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.

Just as I am the story of my Grandmother carried on through my artistic flare, we each are the letter of Christ to those around us.

I will never be able to understand the pain of so many broken places in the history of my family.

What I CAN begin to understand is that Jesus loves us through our story no matter how broken and the memories that sting are made sweeter by the knowledge of His presence.

Vance Havner said, "God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength."

And because of the brokenness, and our transparency in sharing those broken spots, God can use our story to show His love to a broken world desperately trying to hold it all together.

Bonnie Gray, an amazing author wrote in her book, "Sweet Like Jasmine, finding your identity in a culture of loneliness,"

"We weren't designed to close our hearts to our sorrows and our joys; we were made to open our hearts to God and each other, to display the unique brushstrokes of all of life's experiences as indelible imprints of God's story."

God's story- HIStory.

My part in Barnum history is not to fight the negative or try to correct all the wrongs, but to open them up- the map of all of my genealogy, spread it before the Lord and ask him to use every wince of it for my good and for His glory.

HIS story.

The love of homemade rice pudding goes deep in this side of the family friends.

DEEEEEEP.

Except for the raisins.

I'm convinced that's not in the original recipe.

Some parts are like a deep hole in the ground of our memory and we have no choice but to look up for understanding and hope,

But as Corrie Ten Boom so graciously stated, "There is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still."

I am an epistle of all that have come before me.

I am known and read of all those I come in contact with.

May I steward my story well.