Legacy

I’ve though a lot the past few months about what a legacy actually is. The way you weave it into being by the way you live your life.

Often, I think we relate to the idea of a legacy as if it’s some unattainable abstract for the “regular folk” that we are. As though, if you don’t have millions of dollars and aren’t a household name somehow your legacy is small, maybe even insignificant.

What if your legacy isn’t so much about what you own, but WHO you are? What if it’s about a child you raise?

A man or a woman, who’s heart you tended when it was small. When the world wasn’t so scary and big. When the hard things were more about who really left that towel on the floor and letting them walk through the consequences of their choices.

A lot of this heart-research I’ve been doing, no doubt, stems from the reality of growing a fifth baby inside. To be honest, it was a sore spot between God and I for a year. A place where I felt Him leaning on my heart to surrender and embrace the idea. But my little heart was too wrapped up in the “can’ts” and the “buts” and the “I’m doing something else for You”.

I’ve learned, digging into the deepest places of His heart, that often what seems like the very thing I don’t feel qualified for is the space where my greatest calling meets His strength.

I’d like to tell you that I’ve got this faith thing figured out and that trusting His leading is easy. But it’s not.

Simple. But not at all easy.

There is the greatest glory in the places where I am smallest.

The legacy I leave will not be one that writes my name across stones and leaves people talking of me long after I’m gone.

The legacy I leave will change the world. It will be a legacy of hearts that beat after His. Five of them.

The one thing I’m qualified to do. The ONE thing, is to be His. Fully surrendered to His heart and His way. An offering to His purposes.

My legacy is His legacy. Nothing more, nothing less.

I’ve lived a lot of my life searching for purpose, direction. My calling. What I have found is that it’s less about defining my identity and so much more about simply listening to who He says I am.

The world would tell me that simply being a wife and a mother isn’t really enough. That my potential and impact are wasted. The world will tell me that this “job” I have doesn’t produce income and so therefore doesn’t have great value to my family. The world will say that five kids is really a lot, and place us in some overachiever category with the rest of the crazy people who drive large vehicles because they don’t have other options.

I’ll remind the world that the only place I want to be is smack in the center of His will. Regardless of how crazy it seems, or much it stretches my little human heart.

I’ll remind them that I’m raising the pastors, missionaries, and worship leaders of tomorrow. That’s doesn’t even mean that’s the title they will carry on their business card. Those will be the titles He and I, together, carved on their hearts. After all, in the end that’s who we all are.

I will be His pen.

Will you? Will you write His story on the pages of time? The words He lays on your heart. The depth of the love story that He presses into your hands. Will it be the song that plays long after your gone?

Maybe it’s the opposite for you. Maybe He is asking you to live a life without children, or maybe without a spouse. Maybe it’s choosing to love someone who’s own wounds have scraped your heart raw. Maybe it’s loving children who weren’t born from your body, ones He birthed instead from your heart.

What will your legacy say about you? Will it be one that you intentionally wrote by choosing Him over and over again? Or will it read of choices made by excuse and the path that seemed easy at the time?

My prayer for you, and for me, is that the legacy we leave will speak to the immeasurable love of the only One who was ever worthy of being remembered. Whose heart was crushed for us, body broken that we might breathe again. And again.

My prayer for you, and for me, is that what they remember of us is Him.

That the people we love and the children we raise are a beacon in the darkness. A message to the world not that we lived, but that He does.

He is the only legacy I want to leave.