L is for Legacy

I’m in the middle of the Legacy Sandwich. I remember my grandparents, and I have grandchildren. What has been passed on to me? What am I passing on to the little girls in my life?

It’s not hard to see common threads. My grandparents (on both sides) were farmers. My parents farmed until I was 7, when they went into mission work with the Canadian First Nations people. My husband’s grandparents were farmers, too. His parents bought a small farm when Jim was a teenager, a long-time dream of his dad’s.

We now own and live on that same farm with our son, daughter-in-law, and their baby girl. Our daughter’s family loves coming to the farm and sharing in our bounty.

This photo is from a photo shoot a couple of weeks ago, with my husband’s parents, us, our kids and their spouses, and our granddaughters taken on our farm. Now that’s legacy!

The legacy goes from farming to food. Both my mom and my mother-in-law gardened and cooked from scratch. Both of them baked bread, canned tomatoes, and simmered large pots of homemade soup, practices I have carried on. Neither of my girls bake bread regularly, but they do know how. They, too, garden, cook, and can. My 2.5 year old granddaughter loved helping her mommy in the garden this past summer. These skills won’t be lost. The legacy will carry on.

Another part of our legacy is our faith. Uncounted generations of Christians stand behind me, while my husband’s family came to faith only a couple of generations back. Our children were raised in the church, and so are our granddaughters. I used to tell my kids that God doesn’t have grandchildren. No one can get into God’s family by being the kids of Christians. Each must make his or her personal decision to become God’s child.

When you stand back and take the long view, what family legacies do you see stretching from generations past to generations future? Or. . .what legacies are you trying to break, replacing with healthier ones?