the fam

Labor Day has come and gone. For most people I think it is just a fun 3 day weekend, but for me growing up, it was time for the FAMILY REUNION!! Every year my mom's side of the family meets at the old "homestead" in southern Ohio (that's O-HI-UH where my family is from!) for what we affectionately call a "Homecoming". Some spend the whole weekend camping close by, some come Sunday night and stay in a nearby hotel and meet around a camp fire and share testimonies. Most come on Monday, just in time for the huge spread of homemade food across the make-shift tables of saw horses and plywood. I usually choose the hotel route...

Let me try to paint you a little more vivid picture. My great grandparents lived on the farm where we meet, which is named "Busy Bee". (We have no idea why!) My great grandfather moved here from West Virginia, and he chose southern Ohio, I think, because it's not much different! Anyway, my great grandmother was his THIRD wife. His first two wives had passed away, the first wife giving him 6 children, the second dying of an illness before she could have any kids. His third wife, my great grandma, was around the same age as his oldest children when he married her. She had TWELVE children, one of which was my grandma Joy, whom I am named after. With a base of 18 kids, can you imagine the amount of first cousins my mom has?? And the amount of people who might be at our family reunion?

The above picture was taken last year at the reunion. It is a picture of my Great Aunt Hope, one of the "original twelve", as we call them. She is on the back of one of her nephew's motorcycles. Aunt Hope is in her 80's, and in the past few years, unfortunately, has started growing senile. This is a cute picture to most, but to those of us who know her, it's a miracle. It's highly unlikely that if she were altogether herself that she would have ever taken a ride on the back of that motorcycle!! It's bittersweet because on one hand it is good to see she is having fun, but on the other, she had to wait until she was in her 80's and losing her memory to lose some of her inhibitions to do so. There are only 4 of the original twelve left now. My grandmother died in 1978. I was only three and don't even remember her. But she and her siblings left quite a legacy of service for Jesus, and I meet people all the time who knew them and were impacted by them. While I know they weren't perfect, it's neat to see the lives that Jesus touched through them. Gives me hope that He will be able to use me.

I didn't get to go to Busy Bee this year and see my family. With the astronomical gas prices and my own mother's health, it just wasn't practical. I talked to one of my first cousins and she said numbers were down in general. That's too bad. I hope that my generation will be able and willing to keep the tradition going. Someday I'd like to be the octogenarian great aunt riding on the back of a Harley...