Prompt: Who are your relatives? Write about mom, dad, brothers, sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. Trace your family history. What is it about them that make you who you are?
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I come from a broken home. If I poured out my family's history on this single sheet of paper, I would make myself cry, and I don't think that's the purpose of this book.
My mother's father seems to be half of the root of this problem I call my life. [Future self as editor (from now onward, FSAE): No. My life is not a problem; my family is afflicted with problems, yes, but my life is beautifully orchestrated by the hand of God.) After he divorced my grandmother forty years ago, my mother's father immigrated to the United States by way of purchasing a marriage certificate. It is completely immoral and wrong on so many levels, but he made a deal with an American [female] citizen to become his wife so he could get his citizenship quickly in exchange for money. Thinking that a woman would sell her name, her identity, and her honor, even if only temporarily, for pieces of paper still greatly bothers me. So my mother was also raised in a broken home, as her uncle (her father's brother) raised her and her siblings. Her younger brother [now] has severe mental problems. My mother still bears the grief of not having her biological father care for her, as her father continually sought failed marriage after failed marriage to find love. I never learned Korean (something I highly regret today), and I cannot even tell my grandfather that I love him like Jesus loves me. He is currently dying of liver cancer, and my mother cannot find forgiveness in her heart for his current wife. [FSAE: he is dead now.]
My father's parents are a strange case. I have never personally asked them about their heartaches because they have really stepped in and acted as parental mentors to me, always guiding me back to the straight and narrow. My parents are in the process of completing their divorce, and my aunt (my father's sister) had three children with an abusive husband until she petitioned for a divorce of her own. I must interject this for myself for future use: Why do you know more about your aunt's divorce than about your own parents' divorce? [FSAE: To answer my 17-year old self, it is because of my parents' stubborn lips and my grandmother's propensity to loose cats from their bags. She can't, God bless her aged soul, keep a secret; your parents kept you in the dark.] My father's parents I claim as my own, in my heart, because I believe that one's parents are the people that parent, not the people that contribute DNA information; it is by God's grace that the two [often] coordinate and intersect. [FSAE: Wow. You were pretty dumb 2 years ago. Imagine what you think is smart now that you'll laugh about next year! I retract my statement with this-- Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. (Ephesians 6:1 NASB)] So my mother's father is stricken with chronic divorces and my father's parents have seen both [of] their children enter failing relationships, leaving heartbroken grandchildren in their wakes.
Ihave but one brother, and his name is Calvin Gregory Pollard. He was named after the Reformed theologian John Calvin and the renowned minister Gregory Bahnsen. It hurts me to say that I see him as what I would become if I was not constantly revived by the Holy Spirit. [FSAE: O Jesus, what bliss he now claims! I joy that he calls You his!] He was only six years old when my father, if you will, slammed the hammer on the splitter that deepened the schism in his marriage to my mother. (A splitter is the metal bit used for splitting and chopping thick pieces of wood.) [FSAE: Go figure, 17 y.o. Joseph. Btw, your writing kind of sucks. You didn't slack off just because you knew these weren't graded, so... what gives, man? Also, what are you saying about your mother being thick??"] He looks up to me (though he would never admit it now), and Ido a pitiful job of setting an example for him. I am responsible for him. Because he looks up to me, I've had to pray for maturity in order to at least give him another father-figure to follow.
My grandparents have been the prime movers in the way God shaped my life as of yet, and I pray they will have many more years to guide me and show me the love of Christ. However horrible this genealogy may seem, I am reminded that God has forgiveness for all snares Ifall into while clinging to my Redeemer. I will not conform to the pattern of my family, but I will follow my grandparnts' footsteps as they follow the Messiah.
Jesus said, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." (Luke 9:23) I will shema .
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I come from a broken home. If I poured out my family's history on this single sheet of paper, I would make myself cry, and I don't think that's the purpose of this book.
My mother's father seems to be half of the root of this problem I call my life. [Future self as editor (from now onward, FSAE): No. My life is not a problem; my family is afflicted with problems, yes, but my life is beautifully orchestrated by the hand of God.) After he divorced my grandmother forty years ago, my mother's father immigrated to the United States by way of purchasing a marriage certificate. It is completely immoral and wrong on so many levels, but he made a deal with an American [female] citizen to become his wife so he could get his citizenship quickly in exchange for money. Thinking that a woman would sell her name, her identity, and her honor, even if only temporarily, for pieces of paper still greatly bothers me. So my mother was also raised in a broken home, as her uncle (her father's brother) raised her and her siblings. Her younger brother [now] has severe mental problems. My mother still bears the grief of not having her biological father care for her, as her father continually sought failed marriage after failed marriage to find love. I never learned Korean (something I highly regret today), and I cannot even tell my grandfather that I love him like Jesus loves me. He is currently dying of liver cancer, and my mother cannot find forgiveness in her heart for his current wife. [FSAE: he is dead now.]
My father's parents are a strange case. I have never personally asked them about their heartaches because they have really stepped in and acted as parental mentors to me, always guiding me back to the straight and narrow. My parents are in the process of completing their divorce, and my aunt (my father's sister) had three children with an abusive husband until she petitioned for a divorce of her own. I must interject this for myself for future use: Why do you know more about your aunt's divorce than about your own parents' divorce? [FSAE: To answer my 17-year old self, it is because of my parents' stubborn lips and my grandmother's propensity to loose cats from their bags. She can't, God bless her aged soul, keep a secret; your parents kept you in the dark.] My father's parents I claim as my own, in my heart, because I believe that one's parents are the people that parent, not the people that contribute DNA information; it is by God's grace that the two [often] coordinate and intersect. [FSAE: Wow. You were pretty dumb 2 years ago. Imagine what you think is smart now that you'll laugh about next year! I retract my statement with this-- Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. (Ephesians 6:1 NASB)] So my mother's father is stricken with chronic divorces and my father's parents have seen both [of] their children enter failing relationships, leaving heartbroken grandchildren in their wakes.
Ihave but one brother, and his name is Calvin Gregory Pollard. He was named after the Reformed theologian John Calvin and the renowned minister Gregory Bahnsen. It hurts me to say that I see him as what I would become if I was not constantly revived by the Holy Spirit. [FSAE: O Jesus, what bliss he now claims! I joy that he calls You his!] He was only six years old when my father, if you will, slammed the hammer on the splitter that deepened the schism in his marriage to my mother. (A splitter is the metal bit used for splitting and chopping thick pieces of wood.) [FSAE: Go figure, 17 y.o. Joseph. Btw, your writing kind of sucks. You didn't slack off just because you knew these weren't graded, so... what gives, man? Also, what are you saying about your mother being thick??"] He looks up to me (though he would never admit it now), and Ido a pitiful job of setting an example for him. I am responsible for him. Because he looks up to me, I've had to pray for maturity in order to at least give him another father-figure to follow.
My grandparents have been the prime movers in the way God shaped my life as of yet, and I pray they will have many more years to guide me and show me the love of Christ. However horrible this genealogy may seem, I am reminded that God has forgiveness for all snares Ifall into while clinging to my Redeemer. I will not conform to the pattern of my family, but I will follow my grandparnts' footsteps as they follow the Messiah.
Jesus said, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." (Luke 9:23) I will shema .
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