All in the Family

My paternal great-grandparents raised 13 children in a Southern mill town during the Great Depression. This weekend nearly 100 of us gathered for a family reunion, all of us descended from or somehow connected to my great-grandparents. 

It was full in every way. Crazy, loud, and overflowing with churns of homemade ice-cream.

Now that I'm a mother, I am ever more in awe of the mothers who went before me. Mothers like my great-grandmother.

Mothers who did not have electric washing machines or dishwashers.

 

Mothers who did not give a second thought about baby scheduling vs. attachment parenting. 

Mothers who birthed and nursed one baby after another while gardening, canning, sewing clothes & quilts, milking cows, raising older children, and caring for those in their community.

 

Mothers who did not get facials or worry about perfect decor.

 

Mothers who lived in the South without A/C.

I sort of envy those mothers. Life was harder, true. But life also seemed simpler. And these days, simple sounds good and pure. I feel increasingly compelled to unplug all the screens around me. Find myself frequently lost in daydreams of living on a farm. {Strangely out of character for an urban-wannabe like myself.} Notice that I'm more and more drawn to simpler ways of doing and living. 

I envy the hard work, strength, fortitude, and piety my great-grandmother possessed. A woman I never got to meet but whose name I now carry. 

I don't know how she sent 5 of her boys off to World War II. Her kids remember that she locked herself in a closet for hours at a time and prayed.  {She was known far and wide as a pray-er.} All her boys came home safely, for which I'm grateful. One of those boys is my grandfather.

I don't know how she navigated the unpredictable waters of marriage at the age of 16, eloping with her 23-year-old love, early marriage a welcome escape from her stern stepmother.

Reckoning with her story came at just the right time for me. As a 21st-century-woman, I fret over things my great-grandmother did not. As a 20th-century-woman, she fretted over things I do not. But with all those children, all that important work to be done, all that praying in her closet, I get the feeling she wasted precious little time on the business of fretting...

A lesson this 21st-century-woman needed to learn in the here and now. 

God placed her back then. He placed me right now. But over the last few days, our stories have intersected and she has taken up residence in my psyche.

I wish she had bottled a tonic steeped with all her virtues and handed it down, just for me, the one who bears her name. But I'll settle for her legacy. Legacies do not expire or evaporate. They inspire and persevere. 

And they most certainly do not fret.

...........................................................................

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:6-7

*This post linked to Tuesdays Unwrapped at Chatting at the Sky.