Got up and Went!
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It has been some time since I wrote a “Family History Friday” post. Life has it’s way of changing and rearranging things. I recently started another job. Another job besides my full time job. I only work another 6 hours a week, but it is just enough to put a kink in the plan that was already in place.
I will admit, I am struggling to find time to do my family history, which doesn’t help. I feel kinda like a comedian that is telling the same jokes for years and years. I need some new material.
I need to get a grip.
I need to do a lot of things.
Right now, it seems I may need to refocus and just “do it”. So for this week’s “Family History Friday” I will share with you something my dad wrote about family history.
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On ‘Little by Little’
We marvel at the wonders of this world and we see them as if they always existed in their current state when in reality they were probably years, centuries, or millinia, in the making. Very few events in history happen instantly even though that may seem to be the case by one just coming on the scene. Greatness happens: little by little, moment by moment, inch by inch, penny by penny, grain by grain, piece by piece, one by one, word by word, brick by brick, stroke by stroke.
When I was a young man I became an apprentice bricklayer and eventually a journeyman. I can remember how in awe I was to see large buildings emerge from the process that I was a part of, ‘one brick at a time’.
Years later I graduated from the university and started a new career, bought a new home. There was no money to buy decorative pictures. I decided to try my hand at oil painting, and I thought, maybe if I were good enough I could decorate our home with my own paintings. I am not ordinarily easy going, nor a patient person and I wondered if I would have the patience for such an undertaking. I bought my first canvas and built an easel to mount it on, then I began my venture. I had never recognized any artistic ability in me nor had I ever attempted to do anything artistic before that time. But brush stroke by stroke an image began to emerge and finally my first painting was finished. Was it anything to brag about, I think not; but it was a start and stroke by stroke and painting by painting I eventually had paintings hanging on our walls. They were not professional but were nice and decorative. Before I gave up painting, I had painted enough fairly nice paintings that my children requested them for their own homes.
When we think of a person’s pursuit of a college education and the capstone diploma, it wasn’t done over night. Twelve years of public school, then registering, class by class. Each class requires books and papers and tests. Word by word, test by test, paper by paper, class by class, term by term, year by year. Finally it is over and tear by tear you celebrate.
My daughter is a busy wife, mother, grandmother, housekeeper and wage earner, as well. She often finds herself a little harried and frustrated. One day her young son, recognized his mother’s frustration in trying to do too many things and said to her; “Mom, Slow and steady wins the race.” This was shortly after having read the story of the Tortoise and the Hare. All things seem easier and life is much smoother and less frustrating when we try to slow down and take one step at a time, step by step. As J.R.R. Tolkien said, “Little by little, one travels far.” From a song I heard along the way, “Little by little, and one by one the greatest deeds in the world are done’… Little by little, and day by day, we learn life’s lessons along the way.”
(II Timothy 1:7) “For God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” We are the offspring of God should we go through life too fearful to attempt great things, when we can succeed, little by little, step by step, word by word, brick by brick, stroke by stroke? In family research it is person by person. May God bless us to be courageous enough to come back to Him with our quiver full of deeds well done and not as ‘a cloud with no water’ or ‘a tree without fruit’. By Emil
