This morning as I was Skyping with my granddaughters, I couldn't help but think about the Easter when their dad was about Coraline's age. Up until we moved away from Tennessee, it was tradition to spend part of Easter Sunday at Mom and Dad's where the little kids in the family would hunt for the Easter eggs the adults had hidden outside if the weather was nice or inside if it was rainy or cold. I can still remember the little sailor suit Matt was wearing that year ... sorry, Mattie, but you were so flipping adorable in that little red, white and blue outfit with your white sailor hat perched on top of your white-blonde hair ... so completely flipping adorable. The main reason I remember that particular Easter so well is because my niece Sharon didn't boil her kids' eggs before they colored them and ... well ... suffice it to say that little kids dressed in their Easter best roughly grabbing said eggs out of their hiding places and tossing them into their Easter baskets didn't exactly have the greatest outcome. We sure didn't realize it at the time when our kids were covered in raw egg goo, but Sharon's uncooked Easter eggs that year have become somewhat of a legend in our family ... a legend that's accompanied by abundant laughter and fond memories each time we mention it.
When I moved from Tennessee almost 28 years ago, the last thing my dad said to me before I climbed into the mini-van with my kids was, "Sam, always remember where you came from ... and know you can always come back home." I've been thinking a lot lately about Daddy's advice to me that day and how I never fully understood what he meant until he was gone. All those years ago when he said those words to me, I thought he was telling me to remember the place I came from but I was wrong. Daddy wasn't telling me to remember the place I came from, he was telling me to remember the people ... he was telling me to always remember the people who had loved me since the day I was born. Daddy was telling me to always remember my family ... he was telling me to remember my heritage.
Though I've never spent much time researching my ancestors, my nephew Charlie has traced our family tree back to King Charlemagne. Yep, that's right ... I'm descended from royalty, and I'm thinking that means there's surely a castle with my name on it just waiting on me somewhere to come and stake my claim. Yeah, right. Kings and castles and fire-breathing dragons aside (in my world, fire-breathing dragons and castles go together), I was totally mesmerized listening to Charlie on Friday evening as he shared the information he had gathered on our family. But here's the thing ... it wasn't finding out the stuff about having royal ancestors or learning that we had family members who fought in the Revolutionary War or even that one guy was saddled with the name Jehue ... none of those fascinating pieces of information are the reason for me writing tonight's post. It's not who my ancestors were that gives me pause ... it's the perfection of the plan that created where I came from that totally and completely blows my mind. It's all the things that had to work in perfect harmony ... all the people who had to be in the right place at the right time ... all the love that had to exist ... it's knowing that my very existence is no accident, no coincidence, no random occurrence but rather a part of God's infinitely perfect plan.
When Daddy told me to always remember where I came from, he was telling me to remember to be humble ... to remember to be kind ... to remember to be loving ... to remember to be caring ... to remember to be loyal ... to remember to be faithful. Daddy wasn't telling me to remember the place I came from, he was telling me to remember the people ... the people who came before me, the people who are with me now, the people who are yet to be.
"Sam, always remember where you came from ... and know you can always come back home."
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