Heritage

Is heritage disposable?
When a young couple comes for premarital counseling (or even if they are not a young couple) I ask them to do a three generation family tree. I would like for them to see the significant relationships that have been a part of their heritage. We learn to be who we are in our families. This is the story of our lives. When you think about your grandparents and your parents, your aunts and uncles, what do you see? Some families are close-knit. They are dependent upon one another. Some families are far-flung. You may not even know the stories of our family. But that IS the story. Is your story full of fractured relationships? That does not mean divorce, necessarily. Sometimes the fractures are tolerated. We learn what we live. We live what we learn.
Heritage counts.
But it does not count for EVERYTHING!

This is the old hotel in my old home town of Dewey. I grew up going to the Dewey United Methodist Church. We were Democrats. Dad worked for a susidiary of Phillips Petroleum, and we had a photo studio across from this old hotel. Across the other street was the Tom Mix Museum. Tom Mix was the mayor of Dewey and a cowboy actor in the silent movie era. The Harbours came to NE Oklahoma before statehood to sell contraband to the Cherokees.

Our heritage counts, but we are not bound by it.