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In 1995, I went on a road trip with my grandmother, my mother, and my aunt. We drove from South Dakota, where much of my extended family resides, to my grandmother’s homeland in North Carolina. It was to be a family history sort of trip. We would be visiting my grandmother’s childhood homes, her old church, family gravesites, and relatives who were still living. My grandmother commented, “I want you to know where you have come from.”
 I recently dug through the hope chest, looking for the journal that I kept during that trip. It had found a home at the very bottom of the chest. With a plethora of photos, newspaper clippings, and yearbooks scattered about me on the floor, I read every page of the journal that I had written fifteen years ago. As I read, many moments felt fresh, as if they had happened just yesterday. Other moments, however, came with little or absolutely no recollection. I found myself digging deep for a memory, wishing that it was in a vile versus a journal and that I, like Harry Potter, had a pensieve in which to enter it. I found myself surprised by certain revelations, like the fact that my great aunt had died just a few months prior to our trip. Somehow in the ensuing fifteen years, I had placed her death in the ‘80s’s, not the ‘90’s. I also wondered about the “truth” of my writing. A light-hearted entry recalled a family tiff, as if it was no big deal. Yet I remember being extremely frustrated.
The journal is filled with photos and messy directions. “Take Jackson Springs Church parking lot, cross Hotel Street, then take right at the next street (Myrtle maybe), go down wooded lane until you see a cemetery and then go down the middle and you will find it.” Find what? I’m not really sure. Buried treasure, perhaps?
As I read, it struck me – in a somewhat anxiety-provoking way – that the directions may never get me back to where we went, that the stories I wrote of my grandmother’s life are few and far between, that my nearing-90-year-old grandmother could pass at any moment taking with her memories, and that my other three grandparents have already passed to heaven with their memories. Can this tiny journal really hold our story? Have I failed to compile something more full, more “right,” more detailed to pass on to my children?
And then I jump the fact that I have completed six pages of Aidan’s baby book which happens to be six more pages than what is currently in Jude’s or Hannah’s baby books.
I am a poor recorder of our story.
Or am I?
What, exactly, does it mean to “know our story”?
My husband loves to tell a well-known story of a group of children recalling their earliest memories. One boy mentioned a moment from kindergarten. A girl shared a tale from when she was in preschool. Another said they remembered being a baby. Then one Jewish boy piped up and said, “Abraham.” For this boy, he understood that his story went way back into the history of God’s people, that he was part of The Great Big Story.
I wonder if more important than journals, scrapbooks and history books is “The Book” which reminds us that our story, the deepest and truest part of ourselves, is that we begin and end in God?
In Psalm 139, the Psalmist has this keen sense of knowing that no one knows them as intimately as God knows them:
1 O LORD, you have searched me and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD.
5 You hem me in—behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.
7 Where can I go from your Spirit Where can I flee from your presence?
I remember reading those words as a young woman and somewhere lost in another journal, I have the distinct memory of writing in earnest about how thankful I was for a God who knew me because I really didn’t know myself, but desperately wanted and needed to know. I had somehow become lost in other people’s expectations of me and the retelling of stories that weren’t the truest part of me.
One of my aunt’s told many times over how I was often a naughty, stubborn little girl. It is one of those stories that has weighed heavily on me, one I wish would not be retold. I wonder what it does to a person when we recall again and again the “worst” part of them?
I wonder what it might mean that in knowing ourselves, we must also forget. In the book of Hebrews, the writer talks about a time when God’s people will be restored and God will “remember their sins no more.” We are reminded of The Great Big Story that God does not dwell on sin; He forgives it.
The year following the attacks of September 11, 2001, a local church distributed lawn sings that read “never forget.” The signs did not sit comfortably with me. In fact, I considered a 3:00 AM ploy to remove them personally from people’s yards. To me, “never forget” sounded too much like “never forgive.” It seemed obvious to me that we would not forget the tragedy that happened or the people who were killed. But what is the truest part of God’s people? That we stay in the pain or we believe in new life? That we fuel our anger or that we forgive like Jesus?
The work of the elders is to tell the children the story of God because it is the truest story. Storytelling is essential to our humanity. Maybe the greatest impact of our family history trip to North Carolina has nothing to do with the fact that I have a journal with messy directions and stories that are incomplete. Rather I got to live the experience of storytelling and those stories have somehow worked their way in me.
What stories do you want to work their way in you and through the children you love? What do you want them to know? Who do you want them to know? How might they get to know the God who knows them better than anyone? How might sometimes “forgetting” help them to be remember who they are? You don’t need to pack your bags, buy a journal, or grab a camera. Just begin telling the story…
Knowing Our Stories Mulling Questions
1. What story has the greatest hold on you?
2. Are there stories that need to be repeated to help you remember the truest part of you? Are there stories you wished were “remembered no more”?
3. What stories do you most want your children to know?
4. Reflecting on the words of Psalm 139, how do you feel about a God who knows you so well? Reflecting on the words of Hebrews 8:12, how do you feel about a God who “remembers our sins no more?”
Knowing Our Stories Action Opportunities
The “Action Opportunities” are meant to do WITH CHILDREN. This is a great way for families to grow together. You don’t have to do everything. Pick what fits you – or invent your own.
1. Use this month to retell family stories, look through photo albums and memory boxes, ask questions of your family that you have never asked before, recall your first date with your spouse, tell your children about the day they were born and other early memories… two great resources to help do this are the board game “Life Stories” which is a non-competitive game that asks questions so families can tell their stories. www.boardgames.com/lifestories.html and the similar “Ungame,” www.boardgames.com/ungame.html.
2. Get to know another peoples’ story… such as learning about your neighborhood from a long-time resident, being present in an African-American, Latino, Asian American, Polish, etc, etc – whatever community is different from your own. February happens to be Black History Month and you may wish to incorporate this somehow into your Raising Micah group. Any Raising Micah group is invited to come for a weekend retreat (or just worship) at an African American/Latino congregation in Los Angeles on the weekend of February 20-21, 2010; contact Chamie for more information at revchamie@mac.com.
3. John Wesley, who began the Methodist movement, noted that our problem isn’t that we don’t want to care for the poor, but that we don’t know them… it’s not that we don’t care for the sick, but we don’t know them… what is it to get to know people better through listening to their stories? Strive as a community to get to know people better; you might want to look at a past Raising Micah essay titled “Knowing Names.”
Knowing Our Stories For Further Insight
In the children’s book This Is Your Song, Dennis Linn, Matthew Linn, and Sheila Fabricante Linn retell the story of an African fable about a boy who “hears his song” as a baby, lives his song, forgets his song, and is reminded of his song when the community sings him back into being. It is a beautiful book that can open up conversation with children into what there own song is… what the deepest part of them is about… to that place rooted in our Creator. |
