We are Family

One of my favorite memories is dressing up with my sisters at our annual Thanksgiving talent show and performing a lip sync of "We are Family," by Sisters Sledge.  Let me interject that Disco music has always been a family favorite and tends to turn us into dancing queen wanna-be's.  I even took our obsession one step further by auditioning at a local historical shopping center to be a village witch during Halloween time--a disco witch.  My alter-ego is Disco DieAna, but that is a story for another post.  Back to family!

Disco Die-Ana

Family is everything to me!  I firmly believe that family relationships will continue even after we die, which of course makes them the most important relationships we have here on earth.  This weekend I had the opportunity to go to Roots Tech 2016, a genealogy conference that brings together genealogists and genealogist hopefuls from all over the world.  While I was there with 25,000 plus other people, I felt a very palpable familiarity and sense of love for the people around me.  I felt my Heavenly Father witness to me that we truly are part of one big world family--His family.  Isn't it interesting that the word "familiar" has at its root "family."  When we say to someone, "You look familiar," it's because we feel a connection to them even though we probably have never seen them before--at least not on this earth.  Perhaps the connection comes because we knew them before we were born, or perhaps it is God's way of reminding us that all of us are connected in one world family.  It is this connection which makes the following quote so poignant:  I do not know all the reasons why the circumstances of birth, health, education, and economic opportunities vary so widely here in mortality, but when I see the want among so many, I do know that "there but for the grace of God go I."  I also know that while I may not be my brother's keeper, I am my brother's brother and "because I have been given much, I too must give" (Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, Are We Not All Beggars).  

I used to feel guilty for not doing family history when I was a young mother.  What I realize now is that I was doing something just as important--I was making family history!  We make history every day.  It's hard to believe that the seemingly mundane tasks that I performed as I was raising my six children will be interesting to someone someday, but I believe we learn so much about who we are and why we do the things we do by learning about our ancestors, and someday, inevitably, each of us will fall into the "ancestor" category.  (That's a little heavy to think about.)

I learned a few family history tips that I wish I would have done while I was raising kids that may be helpful for those who still have their children home with them and really don't have time to delve into finding ancestral names and making pedigree charts.  Remember, "to every thing there is a season."  It may be your season to focus on making history rather than finding it.

Tips:

• Write down the funny things your children say in a notebook with their name on the front.  Trust me, when you get to be my age, the things you thought you'd remember die with the brain cells that contained them!
• Tell personal stories from your life.  That way your history gets recorded inside the minds and hearts of your children.  Remember, "It's not a story if it's not told."
• Be authentic.  When keeping a journal or telling a story to your kids, include the tough times and the bad decisions.  Your family needs to know that you are human.  Who knows, they may even learn something that will help them in the future.  Include stories of forgiveness, something that is so needed in this world.  I love this quote, "Forgiveness is not a matter of forgive and forget, but forgive and remember."
• Tell your children the stories of their ancestors.  Did you know that the top predictor of a child's happiness is that they know about their family history?  Studies have shown that children who know more about their family history are happier and have a greater sense of who they are than those who do not.
• Write a family mission statement.  Make a list of qualities that your family has when they are their best selves and write them into a short mission statement.  Put it somewhere in your home where your family can see it often.  Not only will this help remind you of the path you want to stay on, it will also become a statement that can be passed down to other generations as a powerful reminder of what their ancestors stood for.
• Keep a digital collection of your family's pictures throughout the year and then make a "Year in Review" DVD for everyone as a Christmas gift.
• Record the voices of your parents/grandparents before it is too late.  Have a Q&A session involving your whole family and record or video tape the session.  Here is a link to a wonderful website:  https://storycorps.org.  The interviews on the website contain powerful family stories.  For some time now, StoryCorps has been recording family interviews around the country, and now they have an ap that can help us record our family interviews.
• A really cool way to get older children excited about their family history is to go to a site called Relative Finder.  You have to establish a Family Search  username and password first so that you can log in.  I tried this site on my sixteen-year-old daugher last night, and suddenly, she became interested in family history!  She discovered that the President Obama is her 10th cousin.  Interestingly enough, she also found that many of those involved in the Salem Witch Trials are her ancestors.  Who knows, maybe Disco Die-ana was genetically inspired!  
• For the Family Search site, click here: https://familysearch.org.  
• For Relative Finder,  click here: https://www.relativefinder.org/#/main.  

I am including below links to my family's "Year in Review" videos for 2014 and 2015.  This is my feeble effort to chronicle pictures of my family and extended family each year.  Sometimes we get the wrong idea about the idyllic life that family videos portray.  Just know that we experience hard times too--times when no one thinks about or wants to take pictures.  However, you will notice in my 2014 video, pictures of my sister Kim, who battled with breast cancer.  This video is a little different because it includes pictures of the Savior lifting and healing.  I think that is what families do best--we are the Savior's hands for each other.
Here are the links:  You are His Hands
                                The Church Family 2015

My challenge this week to myself is that I treasure each day and recognize the power of the present to make the history of the future.