Retracing Our Steps

Received a call from my sweet niece who wanted more information about the house where her father had lived. Her dad was the eldest of the three brothers in the family, with I being the youngest. We had lived in a coal mining town, and I had not seen our old house for decades. My maternal grandparents lived several homes away. My niece wanted information about them as well.

Much likely changed over the decades, so whatever information I remembered was certainly not up-to-date. “Why all this interest in retracing one’s historical steps?” I had asked.

She related her experience when her twenty-three-year-old daughter had lost her life after battling multiple myeloma. The only thing what provided any measure of comfort was recalling old family memories, tales of family bonding and experiences that pulled a family together to fight the battles collectively cast before us. She prayed and meditated on those family memories throughout the final stages of her daughter’s life. My niece’s comfort and strength came from family even though our current family is vastly different than our childhood memories. Time tends to alter one’s memories, good or bad. She now wanted to revisit those memories and chronicle the comfort and strength from those times for the current and future generations.

Faced with a free weekend she came up with a plan. She would drive to each of the family homes in the coal-mining community and try to speak to the current occupants. It’s just a start, and it may end up futile with little new information. But there is still comfort in the process. She is not trying to change the course of the family history. She is not trying to understand all the ins and outs of life.

Proverbs 20:24 reminds us, “The LORD directs our steps, so why try to understand everything along the way?”

Our comfort does not come from understanding. Our comfort is rooted in the Lord overseeing our lives, and how he uses others, like our families to minister into our lives.

Robert Parlante

August 2017