Family Tree

Have you ever noticed that only the really young and the really old care about the past, the family history,  and what Grandma did for fun when she was little? Our grandkids are constantly peppering us with questions about their parents as little kids and what we did "back then" for fun. The young ask the questions, the old answer them. Now in no way do I consider myself really old (not yet, anyway), but I find myself suddenly engrossed in researching my and my husband's ancestors, and trying to go back as far as I can. I have never really given it much thought before, but suddenly I am in danger of turning into one of those crazy, old, blue-haired aunts that can regurgitate family names, marriages, number of children, and spicy stories five, six, even seven generations back. 

It all started innocently enough--I couldn't sleep, so I decided to organize the basement cedar chest--the one with the scrapbooks, memorabilia, and baby books.  As I was sorting it all into piles--one pile for me, one for Alex, one for each of our children, and a big box for grandchildren's artwork--I came across some things I had not seen in a very long time. One of those items was a handwritten genealogy of my dad's family tree, all the way back to my great-great-grandpa: twelve pages of meticulously documented names, birth and death details, marriages, burial locations, even their professions and nicknames. I sat and stared at it, then began to study it, closely, until finally, I just had to plug all those names and dates and data into an actual family tree so I could see it all spread out in beautiful, magnificent flowchart fashion. Voila, problem solved with the discovery of an extremely user friendly program; I could plug in the data, and it automatically searches existing genealogical data and gives suggestions, sources, dates...in short, everything. After one night I had a family tree that, in some areas, extended all the way back to the 1700s. Mind boggling, seriously mind-boggling the amount, complexity, and detail of the data at our fingertips. A tad bid scary as well. All I did was type in the information of five generations in my dad's family tree, and suddenly, little blue boxes and notifications were popping up next to all the names on my family tree, telling me there were more sources, more data to digest and validate, more details, more, more, more, more.  I was hooked, maniacally digging for more data, more dates, more names, trying to "complete" our family tree, but every time I thought I was finished, yep, more notifications, more little blinking blue boxes, being spit out by computers and the cloud and whatever else generates all this data stored in cyberspace. I would never be finished, some data was just too hard to find (like my husband's ancestors in Spain--I am convinced that Spanish surnames actually are a family tree in and of themselves). 

So I stopped. And then it hit me. One day, 50, 100, or 150 years from now, one of my descendants would ask her grandma what it was like when she was a little girl, and her grandma would talk about life, share memories, and perhaps even show her a family tree with my name in a little white box six generations before the little girl was even born. What would the computer sources have spit out for my name? What little fun details would be listed? What stories could that grandma share about me with my future great-great-great-great-great-great to the nth degree granddaughter? What will I have accomplished, said, demonstrated, or lived that would leave a mark on the world, especially on that little girl's life? Will I be known as someone who loved and followed Jesus? 

All those white boxes and lines on my chart, filled with names and dates and places where they lived--but that is all they are. Boxes, two-dimensional shapes on a screen. The living, breathing people who came before me made a difference, in their lives, their community, my grandparents' and parents' lives, and ultimately mine, because someone in my family tree told me about Jesus, about my heavenly  Father, and because of that, I am now grafted onto the ultimate, eternal family tree. 

Let that be my mission, my passion, my goal in life. Out of the box.

This little light of mine

I’m in Texas visiting my friend this week, my best friend actually, whom I haven’t seen for nearly two years. She has been going through some life changes, life changes that seem to me to be repeats from her past choices. Since January 2019 we’ve been communicating via text and videochats, and while that’s fine for mundane issues or catching up about kids and the job, it is woefully inadequate to discuss life’s deeper issues, and definitely not the channel to discuss divorce, bitter child custody disputes, or the desperate need for God in our lives. I’ve shared my faith before, and hopefully I reflect Christ. All the chats and talks since last year have been fraught with emotion and misperceptions, and everything I said seemed to generate more misunderstanding. So little wonder that I was initially conflicted about traveling and confronting her about the issues that are heavy on her heart; however, I decided, finally, to come and confront the dragon (not my friend—the glaring issues). 

Part of my visit overlapped her weekend custody of her 5-year old, Nora--a precocious little ball of energy and the center of this nearly year-long controversy over who will get to raise her. We had a fun weekend, trying to just have a "normal" fun time at the beach, reading books, watching movies, and the like; it also included me teaching her little ditties and snippets of songs. One that popped in my head the other evening was "this little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine." 

I had been so worried about what to say, what to do, how to express my love and support and friendship, and it was all in that sweet, simple song from childhood Sunday school. Let my little light shine.

"For this very reason make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For these qualities are yours are are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ...for if you practice these qualities you will never fall." (2 Peter 1:5-8, 10

Taking Inventory

Have you ever had to take inventory to ascertain what you have on hand, and what you need to order? I used to assist my dad in his drugstore, counting greeting cards, bottles of aspirin, shampoo, nail files, even helping him enumerate prescription pills. My dad was amazing at this--he could hold up a bottle of pills and guess how many were in it, and 99% of the time, he hit it on the nose. Oh to be that skilled at identifying my own surpluses and deficits. Self-inventory, or finding out who I am, who I am supposed to be, and how God purposed me. Easier said than done, because everything I thought I knew about myself and who I was has been stripped away over the past five years, leaving me confused and unsure of my identity, my worth, and my faith. When you have been told, from infancy through middle age, you are no good, a problem, wrong, and will never amount to anything, you believe it. All of it. Especially when it comes from the lips of the person put on this earth to nurture and love you unconditionally. Yeah, my mom, but I am not going into all that right now.  And yes, my sisters betrayed me, believed her lies, shunned me, and have totally cut me out of their lives and their children's lives. I have written about those dysfunctional relationships ad nauseam, prayed about it, received counseling for it, and shed enough tears to float an armada; none of that changes anything. It happened. It sucked. 

So now what?

Confidence shattered, first I withdrew into myself, began to believe the lies and the distortion of the truth, that I never was, and never would be, good enough--sister, wife, mother, Christian...fill in the blank. Hard to believe I was ever in charge of anything in the military, or a subject matter expert in manpower and personnel, with accolades and awards and promotions one right after the other; hard to believe, because that person seemed so far removed from my current state it was as if I was two distinct people. That "other me" had a job to do, that person had authority, and the trust of her subordinates, peers, and supervisors. That person exuded confidence, self-assurance, and expertise at all jobs--military and civilian: cashier, respiratory therapist, student, waitress, bartender, military member, contractor--that person thrived on challenges. Regardless of the assignment, she never gave in or gave up; that person was a leader, a go-getter, an over-achiever, and, most importantly, respected and loved. Airmen I worked with decades ago still look up to me and credit me for their success. Kids I taught in Sunday school twenty years ago invite me to their weddings. Young women, my daughters included, listen to me, ask my advice, and tell me how articulate I am, that they envy my confidence; for all intents and purposes, to them, to others, to the outside world, I have it all together and have life all figured out. 

In my personal life, nothing could be farther from the truth, especially since 2015. Within the boundaries and disciplines of a well-defined job, sure, but in the nebulous ambiguity of relationships and socialization, I am a mess--insecure, uncertain, ill-equipped, ever questioning my own motives. In other words, I completely lack any confidence in myself, my thoughts, my words, my past, and my effectiveness, and, worse still, I use the yardstick of my estranged family's opinions of me to measure my success...at anything. I mistake the most innocent comment from one of my adult daughters as an accusation, and then I descend into a vortex of self-incrimination. Not a fun place to be, and definitely not healthy--emotionally, physically, mentally, and spiritually. Spiritually--funny I should go there, because that is where I should have started, where I should always be returning...to God, to Jesus, to the Holy Spirit, because only in God can I discover my true identity.  So I jump off this merry-go-round of self-deprecation and self-condemnation, and proceed to determine who I really am, and to take inventory of my strengths, my weaknesses, and my sins--the facets that make me who I am, and that align with the purpose God has in store for me. 

All of us are endowed with natural abilities, which we should develop and use accordingly, for the good of God's creation (although not everyone does that). God has blessed me with intelligence, a propensity for being task focused, awesome organizational skills, and a natural appetite for learning and understanding; I am also sensitive, empathetic, a good listener, and a natural caregiver. On the flip side, however, some of these very same strengths are double-edged swords and, used wrongly, become stumbling blocks and weaknesses. While intelligent, I tend to become impatient when someone does not understand what is apparent to me, and my sharp wit can quickly degrade into sarcasm, or (cringe) passive aggressiveness. And while being highly sensitive alerts me to infinitesimally small changes and levels of discomfort of those around me, it also has the unfortunate reaction of making me uncomfortable and defensive, causing me to withdraw from, or outright avoid, social situations. Likewise, my natural ability to discern the root cause of an issue sometimes elicits anxiety and exacerbates my deep-seated fear of confrontation.

So what do I do with this inventory? It's not like I can order up some more strengths like my dad would order more aspirin, nor can I simply hide my weaknesses; that does not work--trust me, I've tried. Followers of Christ are blessed with abilities, even those abilities we may view as handicaps, to strengthen the faith of others, not for our own gain. The secular, worldly view? We can be whatever we want, we create our own successes, and we deserve to be lauded and appreciated and admired for our achievements. According to Scripture, though, our gifts and our abilities are not earned or deserved, but a matter of grace to be used to serve others, strengthen them, and fulfill God's purpose in our lives and theirs. “I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you, that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine.” (Romans 1:11,12). 

Yes, even our weaknesses point to our Creator and to Christ; in our weakness He is made strong. Throughout this journey of being broken, of having my insides laid wide open, naked and afraid, I have grown closer to God and marvel at how He uses me to fulfill His purpose. Because of, not in spite of, my trials and my weaknesses, I see that same pain and suffering in others, and can share my testimony and point them towards the Gospel. 

"As each has received a gift, employ it for one another (or serve it up to one another) as good stewards of God’s varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who utters oracles of God; whoever renders service, as one who renders it by the strength which God supplies; in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ." (1 Peter 4:10,11)

Inventory complete, except for one glaring omission, my most critical strength: chosen, adopted, loved, and cherished child of God, daughter of the King. He covers all my sins, my weaknesses, and values me and loves me for who I am.