Happy New Year!

What do you do when you are between the ages of three and seven, and you go visiting on Christmas Day to Great-Grandma's house, and she lives out in the North Carolina country-side, surrounded by tobacco fields, cows, and wide open fresh air?

First you eat dinner even though you really aren't hungry. All the aunts and great-aunts have brought delicious home-cooked country foods, so you take a bite to be polite, but what you really want to do is open Christmas presents. There's a mountain of them on the floor around the little tree. It's your favorite part of the day!

Then, you run outside with your brother before the rest of the family shows up. There's a hayshed outside, and huge oak trees just beyond the backyard. You walk around the hay-shed, play in the hay, and crack open acorns to find out what's inside them. 

Then other family members show up, more cousins, more presents, and someone calls you inside because it's time to open the presents. Adults take pictures,...wrapped boxes and tissue filled bags are passed about, ...some are laid in your lap,... there's lots of talking and questions, and there's a bunch of hugging.

Not long after, you and your young cousins run outside to play in the sunshine while the adults clean up the mess inside and talk. You like playing with your cousins, but you haven't seen them in so long that you've forgotten their names. Names don't matter when you are having fun. You call each other "Hey" and "Little Boy".

Finally, all your great-aunts and great-uncles hug you good-bye, and get into their cars and drive home. Some of them live very far away, so you won't see them probably for another six months to a year. You go home and ask your parents about your cousins and your great-aunts and uncles who live so far away. You wish you could have spent more time with them because they really liked being with you and talking with you...

The video I made this week, to mark the transition from one year into the next, carries with it a message to our family, but the message certainly goes beyond our family alone. I think it illustrates what's happening to families all across the country. We are moving apart from each other.

Moving away from one's family is not a bad thing... we want our kids to grow up and move out, to begin their own lives, raise their own families. This means that we have done a job well done as parents.

Yet, we don't want them to forget their family connections, their history, their responsibilities to family. We must keep in touch. For the sake of the youngest members.

It becomes harder and harder to do as our children become parents, and we become grandparents, and our own parents become great-grandparents .... the family keeps growing. And it will continue to grow long after we are gone.

What are we leaving behind for the ones who will live on without us? What words can we give them that will help carry them into their future without us? What memories of us will they cherish, what will they tell their little ones standing on our graves? Will we even be a glance in their thoughts?

Memories aside, what values can we impress upon them in the short moments we have together? Even if they don't remember who said what, or even who did what, at least we want them to remember the word, the deed, the moral of our story. They will know what country they live, the name of our planet, and even the names of some constellations and galaxies... but do they know the roots of their family, and their faith? Make those family times together significant, uplifting, encouraging, hopeful, and meaningful.

This video reminds me that my role in this family is not quite completed!

I hope you enjoy it. It's about 7 minutes or so long. Pour yourself a cup of hot tea or coffee and set a spell.

                                          

 

                                                         We have been apart too long!

             

                                     

 

                                                    Thank you for visiting.

 

May 2008 be for you a year of positive change and growth, of growing up, of forgiveness, of family and friendship, of Faith, of moving forward (even if only a little), of service of the heart for someone you know who is in need, and giving love to someone who is suffering in loneliness.

 

 

Happy New Year!

Bea

Tags: Family, Christmas Day, Mary Did You Know, Jingle Bells Rock, Blogplugs