Wednesday, December 16, 2015

a full circle


The quote says I am the result of the love of thousands, but today I am only thinking of one. My grandmother was a varied and contradictory woman. Born to a single mother in the twenties, and orphaned at a young age, she lived a life entirely different. She cobbled together her own identity from the strange start the universe gave her and built up a family of her own - each of us fierce, faulty, and deeply rooted in our own strength - that is her legacy. A family of women who know themselves and their place in the world around them - a sisterhood between my cousins and I, my aunts, my mother - that is her legacy. She spent her later years in ministry, studying truth and loving deeply broken souls into a place of peace and healing. We are truth seekers and peace bringers in this family. We each have dark and twisty places and love all the deeper because of them - that is her legacy. 

We are all of us who we are - healers and helpers and ministers and mothers, bold truth tellers and warriors in prayer because of her personhood and influence. We are all of us who we are - scarred and broken and depressive and brooding. 

Both bitter and healing. Her name was Rosemary.