Are Legacies Dead? How are You Leaving a Legacy? (Hint: you’re leaving one whether you realize it or not.)

“When I read it this morning, Mom, I didn’t realize how many tears I needed to cry about this day. I didn’t realize how badly I needed to revisit this event.”

My oldest and only son, Drew, wrote that to me after reading our Family Story page on my website. Ten years after our family’s world came crashing down at dizzying speeds when two of our daughters, his sisters, were in a tragic 4-wheeler accident. He had to hold his baby sister whose face was severely crushed in his merely 16-year-old arms while waiting for an ambulance.

If there is one thing my kids—now all young adults—have heard from me over and over again before flying the nest, if there is but one legacy I long to leave, it is these words:

“If you don’t remember another thing I say your whole life, please remember this. When suffering hits you out of nowhere. Ask Jesus to come and heal your heart!"

Because in this world we will have troubles. But Jesus overcame the world, and we are more than conquerors in Him. (John 16:33, Romans 8:37) The thing is, we are often clueless what that really looks like, or how it works.

For more than 15 years I have been asking God the “what’s” and “how’s.”

When something awful happens that shakes you to your core. When a word cuts you down until you barely remember who you are. When suffering looms long. How do you recover? And what in the world do we do with the things that happened to us as a kid ourselves? Does it even matter?

It DOES matter. First, it matters to God because He loves YOU. Enough to execute a rescue plan for YOU. Second, it matters to the ones who are watching, the little and not-so-little ones who are wondering if God really cares about them, what faith really means, and by watching, deciding whether or not they want to have anything to do with Jesus at all.

My deepest hope and prayer for my children and grandchildren and their children, is they see through my life that no one ever cared for me like Jesus, and know to the core of their marrow that no one will ever care for them like Jesus. In that knowing, may they find their own healing and wholeness.

I’m not always aware how much they are watching, or how they are interpreting what is happening. Each one has recently spoken life-giving words to this mama. Because of the impact, Mandy Farmer and Michele Brusvoort are featuring our story and my work in their Legacy Link-Up.

If my heart could tell a story
If my life would sing a song
If I have a testimony
If I have anything at all

No one ever cared for me like Jesus
His faithful hand has held me all this way
And when I’m old and grey
And all my days are numbered on the earth
Let it be known in you alone
My joy was found
Oh my joy, my joy

Let my children tell their children
Let this be their memory
That all my treasure was in heaven
And you were everything to me

No One Ever Cared for Me Like Jesus, song by Steffany Gretzinger