Getting it together

Two weeks to go and wouldn't you know it - I'm trying to get a project done that I should have/could have done some time ago. I never could decide what I wanted to do. Hmmm that sounds familiar.

See this stuff..... and this is only a portion.

Boxes and files of family history - a wealth of information amassed by my mother the historian. She died in December 1996 and once again I find myself wishing that I would have made myself her student and helped her then to bring order to all this. Or just listened closer to the stories she would tell. I share with her and her brother the historian gene - only theirs were well developed and mine is not. But I have wanted to honor her efforts and her love of family by holding on to these things and now thanks to the scanner and cd burners I'll make at least some of it available to other family members.

It's very fun to learn things about your history and to connect yourself in a concrete sort of way to people who lived centuries ago - even to find yourself connected to the larger community of mankind through this information. I found Friday that a great somebody was one of the jurors at the trial of Sir Thomas More and that his sister married the judge. OK - not world shattering news but I thought it was kinda neat.

But as I look into the lives of my ancestors - close and far ancient - I am also struck with the realization that what ever wonderful or even shameful things I might receive from my earthly family connections, it is my heavenly connections that define me.

I am the child of my heavenly father. He loves me and has made a place for me alongside his only begotten son. It is from him that I receive my identity, my place in the world I live in and what ever my future holds.