Before the Stories Are Gone

One of the things Gina and I have been doing recently is tracing our family histories.

It all started with a simple question:

Where did we come from, and more specifically, we wanted to see if we could confirm the stories we had heard growing up.

The stories our parents and grandparents told us.

The stories that had become part of our family’s history.

So we began digging online through birth certificates, death certificates, census records, and old ship manifests, hoping to connect the pieces.

What we discovered surprised us.

The records confirmed names.

They confirmed dates.

They confirmed places.

But they rarely confirmed the stories.

Instead, they gave us only the basic facts of a person’s life ... when they were born, where they lived, when they married, how many children they had, and when they died.

What they couldn’t tell us was who they really were.

What made them laugh.

How they met.

What they prayed about.

What fears they carried.

What sacrifices they made.

How God carried them through difficult seasons.

These are the stories we are really searching for.

Gina grew up hearing that her great-grandmother was Cherokee and lived on an Indian reservation before marrying her great-grandfather. That story has been passed down through generations, but so far we’ve been unable to find the documents to confirm every detail.

In my family, I was always told that my great-great-grandfather came from Galicia, then part of Austria-Hungary, now divided between Poland and Ukraine, and after arriving in America, opened a neighborhood grocery and meat market and then returned to Galicia to teach.

We’ve found pieces of that story, but many of the details have been lost with time.

It made me realize something.

The facts of a person’s life can often survive for centuries.

The stories rarely do.

And once the people who remember them are gone, those stories often disappear forever.

Several years ago, Gina started something with our grandchildren that has become one of our favorite moments with them.

One day when we were with Christopher, our grandson, she simply asked,

“Do you want to hear a story?”

His eyes immediately lit up.

She didn’t open a book.

Instead, she told him stories about our family. Stories about people he had never met. Stories about when his mom and aunts were little. Stories about God’s provision, funny moments, answered prayers, and the people whose lives eventually became part of his.

She painted the details so vividly they could almost picture themselves there.

Now they, including Jonathan, don’t wait for us to ask.

Whenever we’re together, they’ll often say,

“Mommom ... Poppi… tell us a story.”

They’ve heard many of them before.

But they never seem to get tired of hearing them again.

It reminds me that children don’t simply want information.

They want connection.

I think adults do too.

Today people often joke about wanting to know the latest “tea.” But I wonder if, beneath that curiosity, God has placed within every one of us a much deeper desire: not to know gossip, but to know the truth about stories and, even deeper, where we came from, who we are, and how God has been faithfully working through generations.

Our stories matter because they reveal God’s story.

That is why God repeatedly commanded His people to tell the next generation what He had done.

“One generation shall commend your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts.”  Psalm 145:4

Again and again throughout Scripture, God instructed parents and grandparents not merely to teach His commands but to tell His stories, stories of His faithfulness, His provision, His forgiveness, and His promises fulfilled.

Why?

Because stories have a way of reaching the heart that facts alone never can.

The Bible itself is one great story of God writing redemption through imperfect people.

Abraham doubted.

Jacob deceived.

David failed.

Peter denied Jesus.

Yet God never stopped writing.

Their failures were not the end of the story because God remained faithful.

Every page points us to the only perfect One, Jesus Christ.

The same is true for us.

God is still writing His story through ordinary people with imperfect lives.

Including you and me.

One day, someone may search for your name on a family tree.

They’ll find the date you were born.

They may discover where you lived.

Perhaps they’ll even learn what you did for a living.

But what I hope they discover, because someone chose to tell the story, is that you loved Jesus.

That you loved your family well.

That you trusted God when life was difficult.

That you forgave freely.

That you lived generously.

That your life pointed others to Christ.

So don’t just preserve the birth certificates.

Preserve the stories.

Write them down.

Tell them around the dinner table.

Share them on family vacations.

Tell them to your children.

Tell them to your grandchildren.

Tell them again.

Because long after the records have faded, the stories of God’s faithfulness have a way of living on.

And perhaps that’s exactly how God intended it.

One generation telling the next not merely who they were … but who He has always been.

Because in the end, our greatest story isn’t our family history.

It’s the story of a faithful God who has been writing His grace through generation after generation, using imperfect people to point the world to the only perfect One.

And today, by His grace, He is still writing that story through us.