We all have stories to tell, don’t we?
Whether you have lived a day or a hundred years, there’s a story about your life worth telling.
Your dreams…
Your successes…
Your failures…
Your heartaches…
Days you wish you could get back and do over…
Days you longed for but never happened…
School days…
College days…
Work days…
Marriage…
Divorce…
Friendships…
Death…
At our birth, a diary of blank pages awaits the journaling, chronicling, scrap-booking and jotting down for our remembrance those events when we rejoiced in the successes, gathered our tears in the losses, and traced God’s heart though it all while traveling the valleys up to the mountain tops of our lives; a library of hope passed on down to the next generation.
We must remember the goodness and faithfulness of God in all things; as He is a husband to the widow. A father to the fatherless. Our defense in the face of injustice. He is freedom in our surrender. He is provision in our lack. He is an open door in a neighborhood of closed. He is a light in the darkness. He is the answer to our questions. He is a stream in the dry desert. He is our way when there seems to be no way. GOD IS! HE JUST IS!
Yes, document the days that had you dancing, laughing and smiling.
But difficult stories are also worth mining beneath the surface to discover the treasure buried in those hard times we’d rather forget. As those gold nuggets of God “bringing us through” what we thought would bring us death is wealth we must share among our heirs;
When we take the time to tell our story.
We must tell our stories to the world, as well as to the generations of our legacy, because all it takes is one generation to forget about God, and there goes their hope here on earth and a future with Him in eternity.
We must take time to tell our story.
Parents have been charged by God to obey His commandments; to love Him and serve Him with all their heart and soul so their days are multiplied and their land is blessed.
Parents have also been charged to teach these same truths to their children, reminding them day and night, that they might receive the same inheritance of blessing promised to their parents.
13”And if you will indeed obey my commandments
That I command you today,
To love the Lord your God,
And to serve Him
With all your heart
And with all your soul,
….
19You shall teach them to your children,
…
20You shall write them on them
On the doorposts of your house
And on your gates…
21That your days and days of your children
May be multiplied in the land
That the Lord swore to your fathers
To give them,
As long as the heavens
Are above the earth.”
Deuteronomy 11:13, 19, 20, 21 (ESV)
Such is this hidden wealth to bequeath our children and children’s children, our life lived for God through our stories.
Everything changed for my husband David and I when grandchildren began filling our laps and stealing our hearts.
Overcome by their sweet faces and our love that overflowed an ocean for all ten of these gifts, we grandparents longed to give them each the moon, but knew giving them God meant riches beyond counting.
Hearing the amplified voice of God speak in a grandparent’s ear to leave an inheritance we listened, we followed.
A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children…
Proverbs 13:22 (ESV)
Though still living these truths before our grandchildren, we began telling about the goodness and faithfulness of God through our stories, transferring the baton of our legacy and inheritance into the grips of the next generation, that they might run their race loving and serving God with all their heart, soul and mind.
Going through the journals of our own lives as young and adult children, we recall and remember the Godly inheritance passed down to us from the generation previous through their stories, albeit just as imperfect as ours, yet the rich legacy we received in their saying “yes” to Jesus.
God’s “more than enough” provision through our hard working fathers.
God’s unrelenting hope through our mother’s who never gave up on us when “giving up” seemed to be our only option.
God’s amazing love through grandparents to our children and their great grandchildren, an example we watched and learned from along the sidelines, whose footsteps we’d follow when becoming grandparents ourselves.
I lament the questions I never asked the generation previous.
I wished I would have sat at the feet of our legacy more often and allowed them to impart the wisdom they gleaned from the fields they sown and reaped from; possibly avoiding a few of their mistakes instead of repeating them.
In the busyness of my younger self,
I didn’t take the time to hear their stories
While they were still with us to hear.
One by one we buried stories when we buried them, journals never to be opened or read again; for that, I am deeply saddened.
But yet, we are still a rich family for the Godly inheritance and legacy they left in our hands and the hands of their “children’s children.”
Reminding us of God’s charge to tell the next generation of His goodness and faithfulness through our lives and through our stories;
In keeping His commandments; to love Him with all our heart, soul and mind.
But don’t you worry kids; your name stays on our “Good List” throughout the month of December and beyond.
Grandkids are something else.
Good or bad, a grandparent’s heart is to give good gifts to their grandchildren. Grandchildren don’t earn our love by accumulating enough good stickers. Nor can they lose our love by those checkmarks of bad behavior next to their name.
No matter our age, our Heavenly Father delights in his children running and searching the halls, calling out for him and his whereabouts.
The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, (which means “God with us”.) Matthew 1: 23 NIV
In our Heavenly Father’s eyes, his children are always on the good list. No “good stickers” or “checkmarks” beside our name ever earn or jeopardize his love for us.