"Remember that a parachute cannot open while you are standing on the ground. But he moment you make that bold jump out of your old comfort zone your parachute will instantly unfurl and help you to sail along."                          --Carolyn Renolds, Spiritual Fitness

MY PARENTS HISTORY 

My mom and dad were both wonderful people.  Their beginnings were greatly different, but they stayed together until my father died at sixty-eight.

My mother was born to Methodist Missionaries in India.  She lived in India until she was three-years old. The family returned to the states after her father recovered from malaria.  When they returned to the states in 1919, the flu epidemic claimed my Grandfather Paul’s life.  My Grandmother Harriet was left to raise six children. She raised vegetables in her garden, feed her family rice, and on Sundays they had chicken. It was my mother’s job to bring a chicken home every week from the chicken farm, since live chickens cost less.  On one occasion, the chicken got away from her and she had to chase it for a few blocks before she could catch it.

When she came home her mother would kill and defeather the bird and feed her family the one day a week that they had meat. Her mother would save the bones and make a large batch of chicken soup to last them through the week.

My father was born into a wealthy family.  His father owned the first Ford dealership in Indianapolis, Indiana, Hatfield Motors. His father was an alcoholic and had a wandering eye for the ladies, and my father was never fond of those traits, so when his father asked him to go into business, he declined.  He went to college and majored in electrical engineering, and when he graduated, he went to work for the Ford Motor Company.

All that they went through, all the courageous things they did along the way, made them into the loving people they were. I miss them.

"We should know what we really believe about God. Indeed, we might say in the final analysis, what a man believes about God inevitably influences his entire experience in life."                                                      -Ernest Holmes, Living the Science of Mind

What were some of the experiences your parents and grandparents went through? Anything that happened, good or bad can help us to continue the traditions, or help us to see how we can do things differently.

Love and light,                                                  Sandy


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