Leave A Trace

Annis was a tough pioneering woman.  She married a widowed minister in Georgia in the early 1800s, bore twelve children, and walked alongside her circuit riding preacher/husband on the Trail of Tears in order to teach native Americans how to read, moving from their established home to the frontier harshness of the Wild West.

I read her husband's loving words in an eulogy after she died in 1868 at the age of 57.  What popped off the page to me was that she read God's Word everyday and through the Bible every year.  That is from which she received her strength.  Other than the basic facts, that is all I know about her.  And that is enough.  That explains a lot.

That daily action in the early to mid-1800s transformed everything she did by transforming her.  And thereby transformed everything she left behind.  I am so profoundly grateful for that deliberate effort and daily choice -- and I am sure that it took discipline on her part.  She was no woman of leisure ("oh, I have nothing else to do, I guess I will read my Bible."). She was a woman of the Word,  thriving through the hardcore reality of life ("I need this.")

Among those who trek through wilderness areas, there is an unwritten rule to "leave no trace."  Pass through the woods without leaving your imprint, no trash, no evidence of a fire, not even a broken branch that would be evidence of you having been there.

But Annis left a trace.  And that has impacted my own life in profound ways.  She understood the impact of God's Word on her life.  But did she realize the impact that would make on those who came after her, not only to her own offspring but to the children of the furthest generation?  Did she ever think that it didn't matter?

Annis was my great, great, great grandmother.

Spending time in God's Word does not just affect me today but reverberates beyond my life in ways I can never comprehend.  It changes me.  It changes everyone around me, even those I may never meet until the other side of life.

May those who come behind us find us faithful.

...that the next generation might know them,
            the children yet unborn,
  and arise and tell them to their children,
         so that they should set
            their hope in God...

                                Psalm 78. 6-7