Relatives

Christmas is coming, which makes me excited . . . but an interesting thing happened the other night. Kristy and I are unable to go home for Christmas this year, so we're making all of our preparations here and trying to send cards and/or gifts home to our families, typical ho-ho stuff.

In doing so, I made some smart-alec comment, you know the kind, where you say something and add some random number to exaggerate a quantity - so I said something about "blah, blah, blah . . . the 87 people in our families!"

So Kristy responds with, "Whatever . . . I bet you can't name 87 people in our family."

I admit, it seemed like a rather formidible task.

But, within a few minutes I had rhymed off, without much stopping to thinking, at least 87 people. It TOTALLY added some perspective to my thinking.

Those are people that we're directly related to - I stayed, I think, exclusively with just aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and parents - I can't even begin to fathom HOW MANY people we have had some kind of relationship with through our lives. I don't think of myself as having a LOT of friends . . . but this really makes you think

How many people have seen Christ in me? How many have seen Satan? How many people have I ignored because they were unpopular? How many people have noticed me because I was unpopular? What's my legacy?

You also hear about the concept of six degrees of separation: the concept that everyone in the world is connected by a chain of, at the most, six relationships. I can only imagine, even from those 87 relatives, how many people THEY know.

In any case . . . I've been thinking a bunch about how people will remember me - not in a morbid kind of way - but, for example, past camp staff that I've not seen in years, and may never see again if our paths don't cross. How do they remember me? What kind of person was I? What did I do to let them know that I cared about them? How do people see me now?

Interesting.

Grace.

Des