Part 2

We really unknowingly and unintentionally, but intuitively, built a legacy.  A legacy of family.  A legacy of community.  A legacy of loyalty.  A legacy of learning and growing.  A legacy of faith.  And most importantly to a family, a legacy of love.  We really can’t take much credit for it though, because we just got together because we missed each other, and we loved to gather and play and laugh and eat too much.  And, to share that with our children.  It is God who built, in spite of mistakes and tragedies, an enviable family legacy through us.  Our parents had made us stick together as family.  We were raised “old-school” in that we sat around and sang old songs and hymns and we played games as a family.  We didn’t get to scatter and go do all kinds of things separately.  We were a family.  We piled in our little living room and together watched one of the two channels we could get on our old black and white television.  We piled into our one car to go to church or wherever, or we piled into the back of the pickup when weather permitted.  I still remember the smells of the country nights riding in the back of the old pickup or the back seat of the old car with the windows down—the smell of fresh-cut alfalfa hay, the smell of a grass fire, the smell of someone grilling out, the smell of dead animals rotting along the road, the heavy and damp odors of the creek bottoms as we drove over the bridges.  We played kick-the-can and Annie-over and roly poly and lots of basketball.  We caught tadpoles and snakes and critters.  We fished and hunted and played in the woods (if our dad would let us out of the house and/or yard that particular day).

We knew how to play together and how to make each other laugh.  We told stories of our past, often embellished for effect.  And, our kids and grandkids listened and learned.  While our kids were growing up in very different worlds than we did, our kids actually enjoyed reunions and family.  They were getting the “old-school” virtues and habits we’d learned, plus the all the added benefits we were all learning and bringing to the table in our own new lives.  And, our family reunions were the epicenter of this coming together.

We’ve learned to hug and kiss and say “I love you.”  We didn’t show much affection growing up.  Although I just knew they did, I honestly don’t remember anybody telling my they loved me until I became a part of a campus ministry in college.  We’ve learned to share our faith together with joy and enthusiasm.  We didn’t talk much about faith growing up and we certainly didn’t express our feelings of joy or brokenness or hope.  On the other hand, our kids, among other things, have variously carried their Bibles to school in their back pockets, they’ve led worship at their camps and churches, they’ve led Bible studies for their peers, they’ve preached in churches, they’ve been on mission trips, and they’ve led friends to Christ. They confess their faith freely and openly and are generally quite comfortable celebrating their faith with their larger extended-family, even with the few that aren’t Christians.  They’ve learned to live “life out loud”, as one of my sons called in it a camp sermon a year ago.  They’re fairly unashamed of their faith and their family.

The “crazy eight,” as the original siblings are often lovingly called, certainly hold the larger, extended family together.  We know that our kids won’t be as close to their cousins as we are as brothers and sisters.  That’s impossible.  The eight of us also went through some tough years.  We were fairly poor growing up.  We had the basic necessities, although not a lot of them, and we had little else.  We grew up in what would be seen in our current neighborhoods as a veritable shack.  We survived the death of our mom mid-stream (four were out of the home and four were still at home).  We survived the abuses and excesses of a controlling father who was often angry and violent or at other times severely depressed.  We survived ignorance and racism.  We were country hicks.  We survived sectarian religion and legalism.  We survived family fights and fractures.  

I shared with my family a quote that my son recently gave me in a frame with pictures of him and me when he was a baby hanging on my shoulders and then standing at his college graduation a few months ago.  The quote was from Sir Isaac Newton that simply says, “If I have seen further, it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.”  I was certainly humbled that my little buddy would see me as a giant in any way.  But, I can honestly say that I see my siblings as giants.  They’ve faced the enemy and they’ve kept standing.  I challenged the youngsters to stand on our shoulders and see further—to have a vision for their own families.  Visions of faith and loyalty and virtue and hope and learning and love.  Visions of reunions of their own families that not only imitate the strengths God taught the original crazy-eight, but reunions that grow even beyond that.  Visions of greater family legacies.

We just started getting together 28 years ago in order to catch up and have fun.  We’ve done it faithfully ever since.  As an extended family, we’ve done lots of different things in different places, but underlying it all we just kept “showing up.”  As individual families, we’ve taken what we’ve learned and built our own legacies of family.

We [God] built a family legacy.  I hope and pray all our kids will carry it on.  It is rare and unique and very special.  I could only wish what we have for everyone.