Rediscovering Roots

                      

                

Rediscovered Roots

Sometimes God gives us unexpected gifts when we aren't even looking for them.

Recently, I reconnected with my cousin Georgia, someone I hadn't seen in many years. Life, distance, and time have a way of quietly creating gaps between people, even family. But through emails, messages, and occasional visits, we've begun building something new, not just reconnecting, but truly getting to know each other as adults.

One of the greatest blessings has been discovering that she and her husband, Gerry share the same faith that anchors my life. There is something deeply comforting about that kind of connection. Conversations just feel different when you know someone loves the Lord too. There is an understanding that goes deeper than small talk.

As I've spent time with Georgia, I sometimes catch glimpses of her mother, my Aunt Harriet, in her expressions and mannerisms. It's both beautiful and bittersweet. In those moments I find myself missing my dad, my aunts, and my uncles even more. Grief doesn't really go away, it just changes shape over time.

Strangely, this reconnection has also felt like getting a small piece of them back again.

Georgia recently gave me two very special gifts that I will treasure forever. One is 2 handmade quilts, one of them carefully stitched together using pieces of my father's and his siblings' childhood clothing. When she gave it to me, I don't think she fully realized what it would come to mean to me.

It isn't just a quilt.

It's history, and legacy. It's love you can hold in your hands.

When I wrap up in it, I feel comforted in a way that's hard to explain. It's warm, and it's heavy, not quite like a weighted blanket, but just heavy enough to feel grounding. Sometimes it feels like being hugged by the generations that came before me. Like a quiet reminder that I didn't just come from somewhere… I came from someone.

People who sacrificed, people who persevered, people who loved deeply, even through hard lives.

Her second gift was something that is also very meaningful, my paternal grandmother's high school diploma from the Class of 1918, which now hangs proudly on my bedroom wall.

That piece of paper represents more than graduation. In 1918, many young women didn't finish school. They often had to leave early to work and help support their families. Opportunities looked very different then, especially for women. The fact that she completed her education speaks to determination, strength, and the value her family must have placed on perseverance.

Now every time I look at that diploma, I don't just see a document.

I see courage and resilience. I see part of the foundation my family was built on.

Sometimes we think inheritance is money or property. But the older I get, the more I realize the greatest inheritance is people, stories, faith, and the reminders of where we came from.

This reconnection with Georgia has reminded me that family ties may stretch, but they don't always break. Sometimes God gently brings people back into our lives at just the right time, when we can appreciate them more, understand them better, and see his hand in it.

Maybe this was never just about reconnecting with a cousin, maybe it was about reconnecting with my roots.

"Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows."

— James 1:17

Sometimes those gifts look like relationships reconnected. Sometimes they look like pieces of the past, and sometimes they look like a quilt that feels a little bit like a hug from heaven.

“What we inherit in our ancestors is not just in our blood, but in our stories.” ~Author unknown

“ Sometimes God brings people back into our lives not just to reconnect us with them, but to reconnect us with parts of ourselves we thought were gone.”~ Author unknown