The pages are stretched out here on my carpet. Twelve sheets to be exact, taped together and covered with scribblings.
The scribblings probably wouldn't mean much to anyone else. But to me, they ARE me. These are the names of the people that made me, with the life-giving ability of procreation that God set up in the Garden of Eden.
The Gilbert clan that stretches back to the 1520 when William Gilbert was born in England. The Robertsons from Scotland. The Cables from the mountains of Tennessee. The Hegeman, Hendricks and Margits clans from the Netherlands. The Konradt and Worther families of Germany.
I don't know why I am so fascinated with these people. Maybe it is the frustrating mystery, that they will always be a part of me, and they will live on through my children and my children's children, even thought their body has long since returned to dust. Yet I will never know who they were. I know that there was a Eliza Jane Morehouse that lived from 1842-1898. She was married to Benjamin Doughty. Her parents were Lemuel and Jane, and her son's name was Lewis Edward Doughty, my great-great grandfather. He was only twenty when she died. Why did she die at 56? What was her life like? Did she love Jesus? Did she have hopes and dreams or was her life only full of misery and trial? What I wouldn't give for a time machine to take me to her so that I could understand who she was! Hannah Grannis only lived for 27 years. Did she die in childbirth when she left this life in 1692? Did her death break her little nine year old daughter Sarah's heart? Then there is Jan and Geerten Bloedtgoet from the Netherlands. He lived 100 years and she lived 92. They died the same year in 1690. What imprinted in their absent spirits as they walked the earth for so many years of medieval history? And how did they manage to live so long without modern medicine and safety precautions?
I wish I knew why the line of my family ends so suddenly, across the entire span in the early to mid 1500's. Have I just not uncovered yet the secrets that lay further beneath the surface? Did the darkness of the years before the great immigration to America prevent them from keeping records?
I must rely on my imagination. I can only guess at who my ancestors were. Based on the fact that almost all of them are from the Netherlands, Germany or England, my people were most likely warring in Germania or on Viking ships when Jesus was sacrificing himself on that cross in Jerusalem. Who first came with the good news? How did they respond?
I don't know if anyone else ever has thoughts such as these. I'm glad God understands my need to know. He put the genealogy of Jesus all the way from Adam to Joseph in the Book He wrote. I'm glad He did, too. Geneaologies tie things together. They make life tangent. They make you trust the Creator just a bit more.
I'm glad for these names, though they can never tell me who these people really were. I'm glad that they were people created and loved by God. And I'm glad that somewhere in those bloodlines, or perhaps before they ever started, someone believed in Christ.
What an amazing God, that can take hundreds of people and make one. And that one can produce another hundred.
That's cool.
The scribblings probably wouldn't mean much to anyone else. But to me, they ARE me. These are the names of the people that made me, with the life-giving ability of procreation that God set up in the Garden of Eden.
The Gilbert clan that stretches back to the 1520 when William Gilbert was born in England. The Robertsons from Scotland. The Cables from the mountains of Tennessee. The Hegeman, Hendricks and Margits clans from the Netherlands. The Konradt and Worther families of Germany.
I don't know why I am so fascinated with these people. Maybe it is the frustrating mystery, that they will always be a part of me, and they will live on through my children and my children's children, even thought their body has long since returned to dust. Yet I will never know who they were. I know that there was a Eliza Jane Morehouse that lived from 1842-1898. She was married to Benjamin Doughty. Her parents were Lemuel and Jane, and her son's name was Lewis Edward Doughty, my great-great grandfather. He was only twenty when she died. Why did she die at 56? What was her life like? Did she love Jesus? Did she have hopes and dreams or was her life only full of misery and trial? What I wouldn't give for a time machine to take me to her so that I could understand who she was! Hannah Grannis only lived for 27 years. Did she die in childbirth when she left this life in 1692? Did her death break her little nine year old daughter Sarah's heart? Then there is Jan and Geerten Bloedtgoet from the Netherlands. He lived 100 years and she lived 92. They died the same year in 1690. What imprinted in their absent spirits as they walked the earth for so many years of medieval history? And how did they manage to live so long without modern medicine and safety precautions?
I wish I knew why the line of my family ends so suddenly, across the entire span in the early to mid 1500's. Have I just not uncovered yet the secrets that lay further beneath the surface? Did the darkness of the years before the great immigration to America prevent them from keeping records?
I must rely on my imagination. I can only guess at who my ancestors were. Based on the fact that almost all of them are from the Netherlands, Germany or England, my people were most likely warring in Germania or on Viking ships when Jesus was sacrificing himself on that cross in Jerusalem. Who first came with the good news? How did they respond?
I don't know if anyone else ever has thoughts such as these. I'm glad God understands my need to know. He put the genealogy of Jesus all the way from Adam to Joseph in the Book He wrote. I'm glad He did, too. Geneaologies tie things together. They make life tangent. They make you trust the Creator just a bit more.
I'm glad for these names, though they can never tell me who these people really were. I'm glad that they were people created and loved by God. And I'm glad that somewhere in those bloodlines, or perhaps before they ever started, someone believed in Christ.
What an amazing God, that can take hundreds of people and make one. And that one can produce another hundred.
That's cool.
*The picture at the top is my great-grandfather William Parsons. He's a hero. When he was 39 years old, he saw some runaway horses in a circus parade headed directly toward his four young children, one of them my grandpa. He sacrificed his own life to save every last one of them.
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