So a word I've heard a lot in the past few months is legacy. What is a legacy? I don't know the Webster's dictionary meaning yet but to me it means what we leave behind when we're done. It doesn't have to be after we die. To me it is when you leave anything. When I left my full-time clinic nursing job, what are they remembering about me or what is better (or worse) there because I worked there. What "legacy" have I passed on to my kids? Why am I thinking about this? Because I believe we have to be intentional. What do you want to pass on to your kids? Deuteronomy tells us over and over to "remember". God says set stones and remember what the Lord did for you here. Or write in on your door posts, or hands.... He also says "tell your children" or the "next generation."
I feel like my generation got pretty caught up in "me". What do "I" want to do? What is convenient for "me"? We've lost some since of what relationships really are with all of this "me" thinking. Add in a dose of "convenient internet talk" which means you don't have to see someone's face, their laughter, anger or tears and you've got a pretty non-emotional relationship. We're missing out on the depth of love. No wonder we have a hard time accepting Christ's love for us.
So what legacy do I want to leave my family and friends? I'd like them to look for God in their lives and experience God's love through loving others. I'd like them to love to learn and try new things and oh, so much more. I do know the only way to start this is to do it myself, so they can see me "practicing what I preach." What about you? What legacy do you want to leave?
"My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours. Maybe nothing is more important than that we keep track, you and I,of these stories of who we are and where we have come from and the people we have met along the way because it is precisely through these stories, in all their particularity,as I have long believed and often said, that God makes himself known to each of us most powerfully and personally." -Frederick Buechner
We do Mom we do. You have lived a pretty amazing loving, careing life so far and will for many, many more years. Thanks for helping make the rest of um more intentional. Love you,
ReplyDeleteAmber