Chapter 14: Continuing or Beginning a Strong Family Legacy
Chester Todd, my father, raised homing pigeons, and homing pigeons do just what their name implies. They find their way home even from extremely long distances. They can fly as far as one thousand miles. They can fly as fast as fifty miles per hour. But whether they fly fast or slow is not nearly as important as is the fact that they come home.
Chester had a good friend who also raised pigeons named Tom Monson, long before his name became well known. Their friendship lasted over sixty years. I can remember at least two times Brother Monson and his son came to our home. When Chester was near death, President Thomas S. Monson visited him in the hospital, gave him a blessing, came to the viewing, and spoke at the funeral, all without being asked.
At the funeral, President Monson shared memories for about fifteen minutes, then graciously said he had to attend another funeral and closed his talk. He walked off the stand to my mother and kissed her on the cheek. Then he passed by my husband, gave him a slap him on the back, and said, in a voice loud enough for all to hear, “Continue the legacy.”
At the funeral for Marv Hammond, his son Jason spoke to the congregation. He reminded his siblings, “This family was built on love. If we don’t continue to love each other and participate in each others’ lives, we squander the legacy we have been given.”
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida spoke at the Republican National Convention in 2012. He told with forthright emotion how his family fled Cuba just before the Communist revolution. "They emigrated to America,” he said, “with little more than the hope of a better life. My dad was a bartender. My mom was a cashier, a hotel maid, and a stock clerk at K-Mart. They never made it big. They were never rich. And yet, they were successful—because just a few decades removed from hopelessness, they made possible for [their children] the things that had been impossible for them.” Senator Rubio defined his father’s purpose: “He was grateful for the work he had, but that's not the life he wanted for us. He stood behind a bar in the back of the room all those years so one day I could stand behind a podium in the front of a room.”
A legacy of love, sacrifice, and commitment to family is what makes strong individuals and strong individuals make strong families. Strong families implant a homing device in children, calling them home to each other and to family values.
Some of you are reading this with sadness because your parents did not leave you a worthy legacy. If abuse, infidelity, divorce, addiction, crime, or any number of other dysfunctions were part of your childhood, your challenges were and are great. Yet in and through the hurt and loss, you have risen above the foibles and sins of your parent’s messy lives. You are overcoming and making life better for yourself and the next generation.
Such a mother recently said to a teenage son’s flippant remark, “I didn’t work my way out of the Project in the slums of Montgomery, Alabama to have you disrespect your mother.” As a child, she realized the “ticket” out of the slums was education and hard work. Now she and her husband are creating a legacy worthy of continuance with love, trust, and solidarity as foundations of their home.
"Bring Him Home," from Les Misérables, is a fervent prayer that many parents say day and night for years, hoping to activate the homing device within a beloved son or daughter. Their prayer is that the love and values they tried to implant in the heart of their child has not been extinguished but is lying dormant, waiting to be awakened. When more than one child has forfeited home and family values, the plea changes from “Bring Him/Her Home,” to “Bring Them Home.”
The parable Jesus taught, known as the prodigal son, tells of such a father and surely a mother. Their wayward son asked for his inheritance and “wasted his substance with riotous living” (Luke 15:13). The son finally realized his foolishness and contritely returned, hoping to be a servant, saying: “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son” (Luke 15:21).
A most beautiful aspect of this story is what the father did while he waited for his son to come “to himself” (Luke 15:17). He kept his heart turned to the son, literally turned. He knew from what direction he would come, and we can only wonder how many times a day he scanned the horizon with hope. We know this because the scripture says that when the son “was yet a great way off, his father saw him” (Luke 15:20). He saw him coming because he was watching for him.
May we continue to watch until all our prodigals, and who isn't a prodigal to some degree, have come home. It’s a legacy of love.
(C) Marilynne Todd Linford, 2018
Chester had a good friend who also raised pigeons named Tom Monson, long before his name became well known. Their friendship lasted over sixty years. I can remember at least two times Brother Monson and his son came to our home. When Chester was near death, President Thomas S. Monson visited him in the hospital, gave him a blessing, came to the viewing, and spoke at the funeral, all without being asked.
At the funeral, President Monson shared memories for about fifteen minutes, then graciously said he had to attend another funeral and closed his talk. He walked off the stand to my mother and kissed her on the cheek. Then he passed by my husband, gave him a slap him on the back, and said, in a voice loud enough for all to hear, “Continue the legacy.”
At the funeral for Marv Hammond, his son Jason spoke to the congregation. He reminded his siblings, “This family was built on love. If we don’t continue to love each other and participate in each others’ lives, we squander the legacy we have been given.”
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida spoke at the Republican National Convention in 2012. He told with forthright emotion how his family fled Cuba just before the Communist revolution. "They emigrated to America,” he said, “with little more than the hope of a better life. My dad was a bartender. My mom was a cashier, a hotel maid, and a stock clerk at K-Mart. They never made it big. They were never rich. And yet, they were successful—because just a few decades removed from hopelessness, they made possible for [their children] the things that had been impossible for them.” Senator Rubio defined his father’s purpose: “He was grateful for the work he had, but that's not the life he wanted for us. He stood behind a bar in the back of the room all those years so one day I could stand behind a podium in the front of a room.”
A legacy of love, sacrifice, and commitment to family is what makes strong individuals and strong individuals make strong families. Strong families implant a homing device in children, calling them home to each other and to family values.
Some of you are reading this with sadness because your parents did not leave you a worthy legacy. If abuse, infidelity, divorce, addiction, crime, or any number of other dysfunctions were part of your childhood, your challenges were and are great. Yet in and through the hurt and loss, you have risen above the foibles and sins of your parent’s messy lives. You are overcoming and making life better for yourself and the next generation.
Such a mother recently said to a teenage son’s flippant remark, “I didn’t work my way out of the Project in the slums of Montgomery, Alabama to have you disrespect your mother.” As a child, she realized the “ticket” out of the slums was education and hard work. Now she and her husband are creating a legacy worthy of continuance with love, trust, and solidarity as foundations of their home.
"Bring Him Home," from Les Misérables, is a fervent prayer that many parents say day and night for years, hoping to activate the homing device within a beloved son or daughter. Their prayer is that the love and values they tried to implant in the heart of their child has not been extinguished but is lying dormant, waiting to be awakened. When more than one child has forfeited home and family values, the plea changes from “Bring Him/Her Home,” to “Bring Them Home.”
The parable Jesus taught, known as the prodigal son, tells of such a father and surely a mother. Their wayward son asked for his inheritance and “wasted his substance with riotous living” (Luke 15:13). The son finally realized his foolishness and contritely returned, hoping to be a servant, saying: “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son” (Luke 15:21).
A most beautiful aspect of this story is what the father did while he waited for his son to come “to himself” (Luke 15:17). He kept his heart turned to the son, literally turned. He knew from what direction he would come, and we can only wonder how many times a day he scanned the horizon with hope. We know this because the scripture says that when the son “was yet a great way off, his father saw him” (Luke 15:20). He saw him coming because he was watching for him.
May we continue to watch until all our prodigals, and who isn't a prodigal to some degree, have come home. It’s a legacy of love.
(C) Marilynne Todd Linford, 2018
Comments
Post a Comment