December 11
Psalm 145:4 – “One generation will declare Your works to the next and will proclaim Your mighty acts.”
One of my favorite Amy Grant Christmas songs is “Heirlooms.” I can’t hear it without getting teary because it is not only triggers memories of driving to my grandma’s house for Christmas, but it also directly reflects how I feel about family traditions.
Heather and I used to beg my mom to tell us stories of her childhood. We would ask for the most random details- “What were you WEARING?” and “What did GRANDMA say?!?!” and my mom would regale us with the mundane details from the best of her memory. We would hear about how she and her sisters would fight and how, being the oldest, she would always straighten them out by bossing them around. We couldn’t get enough of hearing about our mom and our aunts’ antics from when they were children! It was incredible to imagine them as kids, miniature versions of the adults we knew and loved, running around and playing just like we did. While I still can’t picture my mom as anyone but my mom, I have a pretty good idea of what kind of childhood she led. I hold these stories and their details (about her clothes and hair) so near to my heart, they are like treasures passed down through the years.
These memories, the ones that can bring tears to your eyes because of the passage of time, are precious and valuable as gold. The true heirlooms that are ours, as a Christian family, are the legacies and stories of our parents and grandparents.
The struggles and victories that our families experienced are our own to hold on to and remember, so that one day we can repeat the stories, giving them the release into the next generation. Even in this day and age of online timelines about our lives, it is vital to pass down spoken word stories so that our families’ legacies remain alive and well in the memories of our children. All of us have fantastic stories to tell, and usually, if we open up our minds to the memories, our families will be blessed by the entertainment they find in the fact that we want to confide in them!!
I can’t wait to pass on stories about all the adventures I have experienced, the antics I have pulled, and, definitely, what I was WEARING when all this action went down. We should all try to have storytime this holiday season. We may have some new (funny) memories to discover what kinds of stories the little ones deem important enough to share.
No comments:
Post a Comment