I would like to thank Lauren D. Collier for contributing the creative material for this week’s post; as inspired by the Holy Ghost.
My God bless all who read, and bless her for the effort. I hope to hear from more invited guests in the future.
It's what we Leave
As we all walk together in this giant thing called life, we affect one another. Whether we are aware of it or not, we leave legacies behind us. Most of us won’t make history because most of us do not affect history much. There are those of us that are the “normal” people, we live, we love, and we die. We’re the people who don’t make the history books, the teachers, the plumbers, the secretaries, and the gardeners, the regular Joes who work a forty hour week and come home to our children. We’re just average people, but that does not mean that we cannot live an extraordinary life.
My Great-Grandmother was an amazing woman. She was a short thing but tough as nails. When the Great Depression hit it struck this country with an iron fist and yet somehow she was one of the ones who found a way to pick herself up again. She started her own ironing business and it became so successful that she had to hire help. This was before dry cleaning and business men needed things cleaned and ironed. It was hot and sweaty work I am sure, and yet she did it because she had too. She was one of the few people during the Depression who managed to get by without drowning in the poverty. It affected how she was though as well as my Great-Granddad, because they were always very frugal after that. After Pop-Po died we went through some of his things and found dress shirts in the drawers still wrapped that we had given him for Christmas. He was still using his old shirts and refused to open the new ones till he needed them. It was just how they were. I don’t remember much about my Great-Grandmother because around the time I was old enough to really pay attention, she developed a form of dementia. It could have been Alzheimer’s, I’m not sure, all I really know is she forgot things.
By this point Pop-Po was dead and Mom-Mo had been left behind. For a while she would still remember her children, my grandmother and great uncle, but after a while she forgot even them because she thought that they were children still. My grandmother would be standing right in front of her and Mom-Mo would be crying for her as if she wasn’t there. My parents would, and still do tell me stories of when she had the full capacity of her mind. She was lively and vivacious and had a wicked sense of humor. We have pictures of her in her eighties sticking her tongue out at the camera. She was the sort who knew exactly who she was and didn’t apologize for it.
I do not remember much about her on a personal level. Most of what I know, I learned from the stories people have told me. There is however one memory I have of her that is as clear in my mind as if it had happened yesterday. One day, we went to visit her in the home and like usual we all hugged her without seeing even a spark of recognition in her eyes. This visit proved to be different however. As we sat down to visit she settled back in her rocking chair, closed her eyes and started singing. It took me a while to place it but she was singing an old church song. It wasn’t a song I knew, my church had long forgotten to sing it, but there was no doubt that the song she was singing was a song about God. Rocking back and forth with tears rolling down her face, in a time in her life when she had forgotten everyone, she still remembered Jesus. She is my legacy. She is my song.
You may think that the life that you are living is one that does not make much of a difference, but there is no reason why that has to be true. There are people who surround your life, who are influenced and affected by the decisions that you make. It may be that you are married and have a spouse, it may be that you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, it may be that you have a large family, or close friends at work, or it may that be you have a great-granddaughter, who looks up to you. I do not know who you come in contact with each day, but there is someone, someone, who is watching you. The legacy you are leaving behind will affect someone, and it is up to you whether your life will be a positive or a negative one. People walk around in today’s world and ask what it is coming too? They complain about our youth and the lack of morals and respect that they have, and yet they never seem to stop and wonder why it is that they are like that? Perhaps we’ve forgotten to teach them morals and respect, perhaps in today’s singular society we have begun to embrace this ideal that each person lives their life solely for themselves. How wrong we are, and how nice that would be if it were true. There are people in this world, drowning in their sin and they are dragging the ones they influence along with them. People think that their sin, whatever it may be, affects only them, when the reality is it poisons everyone around them. How much better would it be to live a life that generations after you can be proud of? There is hope for your life, there is a Jesus who loves you and gave himself for you, and there is a God who has all power to place you above the sin that contaminates this life. You have an opportunity to not only turn your life around, but in the process, influence those around you. Your legacy could be Jesus. What more could we attain, that is greater than that?
Proverbs 22:6
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
Deut. 28:1-2
And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments which I command thee this day, that the Lord thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth:
And all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God.
James 1:5
If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.
2 Timothy 16-17
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.
