As I approach my 70th birthday, I find myself reflecting on my legacy. The dictionary would define Legacy as a gift or a bequest, that is handed down, endowed or conveyed from one person to another. It is something descendible one comes into possession of that is transmitted, inherited or received from a predecessor.
So often we see this as having to do with something of a financial or tangible property that is passed down. I think there is something so much more that we need to look at that I call legacy. It is the legacy of who we are and what we pass down in terms of character and purpose.
I have four children and very little property. I don’t expect there is going to be much jumping for joy when my will is read. So I have decided that it is best to leave my legacy while I am alive. I may not have time to acquire a great deal of property or money, and I doubt many of my favorite possessions will mean much to any of my children. So what can I leave instead?
Not to be pithy or sentimental, but love seems to me to be an important legacy. Loving in a healthy way will leave my family or those that know me with some idea of what I stood for and why I do the things I do, whether agreed with or not.
In my book “He Knows My Name,” I talk about love being my redemption for all my failures as a Mom, woman and wife. In a very intimate time with God, I was reminded that for all my failings, my heart was always to love well. Many times it didn’t look like it, as I didn’t have a very good model in my family, but when you have the heart of Jesus in you, love just seems to manifest in spite of yourself.
Yes, I loved the wrong men, and gave myself away too easily, and yet I look at the fruit of these four children and the seven grand children, and love had something to do with that. They all love well and truly, and that is a legacy I take some credit for. Is it enough for me to die in peace? Well, I am working on that.
You see, I am not done. With the loving. I have a lot to learn. I am a tough nut, who has been hurt by love more than I have been healed by it, except for the fact that I have a perfect loving savior in Jesus Christ who lets me kow every day that He loves and values me. That is usually enough, and yet there are so many out there who don’t even have that and it seems that if I have all this love inside me, there are probably a lot of people who could use a touch of that in their lives.
So looking for places to love, especially the unloveable, or even unlikeable, becomes my legacy and there are days when it isn’t easy. Nothing worth doing is really easy, is it? It is easy to love my grandchildren… they love me no matter what. But what about that child who still feels the hurt of my brokenness? Or the husband I have still struggled to forgive?
My legacy will be whatever I choose to make it. I am sure my family would love it to be money and property. I never got any of that from my family and had to look for my family legacy elsewhere. It wasn’t easy to find but there is always something good that we can draw from our family outside of the traditional wealth and property.
My dad was an organizer, a salesman, a toastmaster, and I have found I have a bit of that in me. The writing and speaking I do reflects that and I am grateful he encouraged my involvement in Toastmasters. There is an art to avoiding the “uh” and “um” when speaking.
He also taught me to enjoy sports. I am bowling to this day because he took me out and taught me when I was 10 years old. He also taught me volleyball, baseball, and football. I can actually hold my own pretty well when watching any of those sports.
I also get a hot temper from him, and I am learning to change my legacy to one of patience and temperance, a fruit that seems to be growing slowly. Justice is pretty big to me, and being opinionated isn’t often very loving. Sometimes your legacy is showing that you can change and not stay stuck in your ways.
More important than anything is the legacy of faith. To pass on to my children the importance of trusting in a God more powerful than them who will meet their needs in every circumstance, giving them a place to turn when life seems to be one big lemon… that is the best legacy possible.
I was reminded today that Moses lost his legacy at the last minute. All those years in the desert to bring his people into the promised land, and he is shut down at the entrance because he “blew it”, sinned. Wow, I can’t imagine how painful that must have been. And yet I can.
The legacy I had always wanted to leave was a wholesome happy marriage with wholesome happy children doing wholesome happy things, and live happily ever after. It wasn’t very realistic. Oh I think they are happy but more like the “Parenthood” TV family than the “Leave it to Beaver” family image I grew up with. I have searched for wholesome happy families in the Bible and have yet to find them. Mostly I find broken people looking for a savior. Even Jesus’ own family rejected him, and He them. Funny isn’t it? The legacy I wanted was a fantasy.
But what the Bible does portray is a sundry bunch of lawless characters who are trying their best to do the right thing and occasionally stumble onto something that is good. They find forgiveness in a God who is the epitome of forgiveness, and find a love that they can only hope to express in the world around them.
So I am in good company. “She loved well and forgave relentlessy.” That is a legacy I would be content with. Sorry kids, you may have to pay to put it on my headstone, or in my case, my urn. For to dust I shall return.