January 8 – “Family heritage”

Quick weather report.  Temperatures have skyrocketed all the way up to 35° this morning.  Prospects for today?  Temperatrures slowly increasing even further until they reach a high of 56° … around midnight.  That’s just crazy. 

I received my first order for the Visual Verses book yesterday.  All the way from Arkansas.  You locals better get with the program before they are all shipped out internationally.

We went to the yearly Vaughan family party yesterday.  It was held at my older brother’s house in Houston.  The approach was a little different from years past.  This time everyone was encouraged to bring photos or especially stories we remembered from family events or members of the past.  The idea was to impart those memories to future Vaughan generations.  There weren’t any of the new generations present, but us old-timers enjoyed ourselves anyway.  My brother had some old photo albums on a table for viewing.  Several of us brought thumb drives with old photos we had accumulated through the years.  Mine was mostly old family Christmases and past Turkey Bowls.  It was fun trying to identify all the players each year at the football game.  The clientele has changed a lot from year to year, so some of the photos posed a real challenge.  My 90 year old aunt was there, and my older brother has done vast amounts of research on our family genealogy, so the two of them had some fun stories to tell about some of the more colorful characters who have dotted out family tree. 

As we left, Jay admonished me to be sure and do the same sort of sharing thing with all my kids.  And then he loaded 13 boxes of books into our car for us to go through and either keep or dispose of however we see fit.  That will be a fun task.  In fact we already did the first run-through when we got home.  I couldn’t stand the wait.  Hey … it’s books.

Philippians 3:13-14 says, “Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

Father, thank you for family and family heritage.  Amen.