I write about sinking our roots into Christ, but I also have genealogical roots and the spreading branches of a family tree. Where were my roots sunk?
The video of my life story (CLICK HERE) shows how my childhood, trials, loss, and heartache have been used by God to make me a more compassionate woman. To help you know me better as I prepare to launch my second novel, I’m posting encores of my first introductory blogs. This post originally appeared August 16, 2011.
Introducing Melinda: Blog #2
BlueRidgeKitties via Compfight
“You knit me together in my mother’s womb….”
The baby seed-kernel of a writer grew within my mother’s womb and was then planted within the fertile soil of a storytelling family, with a teacher mother and a librarian father to nurture the germinating seed. This soil would foster a wordsmith. This was not my choice. I made no decisions at this point. I had nothing to do with it. This was the place God put me so that I would become myself. I am part of a bigger story.
In the red earth of Oklahoma I grew up surrounded by loud and imaginative storytellers with perfect comedic and dramatic timing. Tales, accounts, and family legends were told and retold, everyone laughing wholeheartedly or moaning as they commiserated, no matter how many times the story had been told before.
During the holidays, when myriads of family members crammed into Grandma and Grandpa P’s house to play cards, I lay at the top of the stairs in the dark listening to the story, the timing, the delivery, the pause before the punchline, the BAM! as it hit, and the roar of laughter or groan of sympathy that followed.
It was a blessed upbringing. I was regaled by aunts and uncles alike, by grandparents, great-grandparents, great-aunts and -uncles, and great-cousins. Storytellers all.
The Land Run. The buggy ride. The kiss. The one-room schoolhouse. The runaway wheat truck. The chickens. The Dust Bowl. The lost farm. The suicide. The heartbreak. The three babies who died in one night. The wheat. The hearse that doubled as an ambulance. The story of the sacred romance–the greatest story ever told.
I had no control over the family into which God placed me. This was my locus, the land of my birth, the family of my nurturing. My parents, my family tree were of his choosing and design. I was germinated in this soil. This was where I spread out my baby-writer roots.
What was your soil? How did you come to be who you are? Thank God for it. It was the fertile soil of the person you would become.
“….I will praise you, because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful. I know that full well.” (Ps. 139:13,14 NIV,1984)
I wanted to write science textbooks as a profession–which did not happen but I spent a lifetime writing letters. Then one day I came home and told my husband I wanted to pursue a writing career and I became a medical writer and an editor in medical communications. Now I write a blog “in everything give thanks” –where I praise God for this life in the present moment. My writing does not have universal appeal but hopefully it pleases Him.
You combined your two loves of science and writing in your first career. Now you’re combining your love of your family and your love of writing as you fulfill your second career (full-time mommy) and blog about it. Can you add your blogsite’s link, Renee?
joyfulmom@blogspot.com–the title is “in everything give thanks” and I write about where I am at that moment and how I want to thank God for where I am. I have wanted to start writing again but it didn’t feel right and then a handful of people told me that I should start writing again withing a few hours and I took that as God knocking on my door. I want my writing to be mindful and have purpose and that happens when I can reflect how God working in my life.
I think of myself as a child of war. My parents were both born in Lithuania in 1930-1931 & left their homes as children with their parents & whatever they deemed important enough to carry along. My father’s family left via rowboat to Germany, my mother’s family left on foot. They were escaping the Communist occupation of their tiny country. My father’s family ended up in Dresden & when the Allied Forces bombed the city in 1945 they had to flee for their lives. My mother’s family lived in Berlin until that city was bombed. Both families ended up in Displaced Persons’ Camps in Germany along with many other Lithuanians. My mother attended high school in her camp, my father chose to work instead.
They arrived in the USA after the war ended, my father came to Chicago with his parents thanks to a sponsor there. My mother took the boat across the Atlantic alone because her brother had contracted TB and could not leave.
My father had been drafted into the USMC, was stationed in Korea & became a US citizen in Japan.
My mother worked as a nanny & then aide at Henry Ford Hospital, then visited a friend in Chicago who found her & her mother a job in a factory.
My parents met in Chicago on a beach in IN that had become the weekend hang-out. My father was back from Korea & had started attending a local community college on the GI bill without ever attending high school. He earned a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology just after I was born in 1960.
My father was one of the founding members of the Lithuanian Men’s Chorus which evolved into the Lithuanian Opera Company. He also was awarded over 200 patents.
I grew up listening to opera, speaking Lithuanian, attending a parochial school with other Lithuanian kids who had last names with 10+ letters, dancing Lithuanian folk dances, singing in a chorus & participating in Lithuanian scouts.
Wow! Melinda, this is great! The analogy is so poetic, yet true! I love the way you have worded your background, making it SO interesting and giving glory to God for His sovereignty in your life!
I didn’t know you were upstairs lying at the top of the stairs listening. Ha! Ha! 😉
Same parents as you, but very different times…17+ years apart in age can result in a lot of differences in upbringing. As you know, I wasn’t exposed to the storytelling side of the family as much as you because many of them had either passed away or because the family was growing and becoming busier, with less time for getting together on a regular basis.
From a strictly creative perspective, I think my artistic side was nurtured by all the events in support of “the arts” that mom and dad took me to growing up. We went to community theater events as much as possible, as well as a variety of museums whenever we went to the ” big city”. Dad’s photography hobby was also present in my life from a very young age, and brother-in-law Mike’s interest in art and painting starting in my early teens. I was an observer of the visual, rather than a listener of stories, growing up.
Good question! 🙂
First, Aunt Jackie, I was sneaky.
Secondly, I think Rita’s and Danielle’s comments show how our varied childhood experiences make us who we are. Rita, you have a very unique upbringing, one which produced traits and outlooks that still affect you today. A hug and a whisper in your ear: Romans 8:26-39. You already know this. God will use, is using, even this for good in your life; everything, even difficulty, is used by him to make us who he wants us to be, for our good and his glory. I cherish you. Many of your greatest strengths come from that upbringing.
Danielle, your comments show how even the same parents can nurture two different children in similar ways, yet produce dissimilar results because of how each child was designed by the Creator and how the parents had changed over the course of time. I had young parents, the musesums, art displays, sitting in the mountains, art classes, along with the storytelling. I was a mediocre artist, but am now a writer. You, on the other hand, had all of that, minus the storytelling, plus older parents, and are now an artist and a relationship diplomat–those experiences resonated with you in a unique way.
These childhood experiences and the emotional package our parents brought to the equation (weaknesses, failures, successes, insights) were the fertile soil of who we are. All used by God to shape us. Good insights and comments. What’s exciting to me, especially as I consider Aunt Jackie’s comment, is that the impact upon us wasn’t readily apparent until many years down the road. The laughing, art-museum-attending, or post-traumatic-stress-Lithuanian parents had no idea how their actions would work together to make us the women we are today. Mingle in the experiences that came later (future blogs on this) and we arrive at just the right God-made recipe to produce (drum roll): Us!!!
I LOVE this exercise in looking back at how we got to be who we are. I never took the time to do that & only recently learned all the details of what my parents had lived through as children. Thanks for your encouraging comments Melinda, it’s nice to feel emotionally healthier than I have ever been – Praise God!
I know He is working all together for good but it had been so painful to reflect on the bad that I was missing out on celebrating the good. But you have made me look & see it & I think God for you friend!
All children of DP’s (Displaced Persons) should have counseling because there are so many wounds we are living with. We don’t realize the richness of our culture because we are trying to make life work. Many also do not have the saving grace of Christ in their lives. My one friend & I joke that we are the only 2 saved Lithuanians!
oops – I meant to write that I THANK God for you Melinda!
Writing for me is expression of the inner self that has been molded by life experiences both emotionally traumatic and joyful. I find the passion of the pen comes fiercely when I am blessed with trials as God is refining me into His image. Words are therapy-sometimes privately penned only for me as a journey through my thoughts. As a young girl, words came easy to me. One innovative teacher designed a spelling spree extraordinaire. For every ten spelling tests of 100% triumph, she would take us on whirlwind lunch date to Big Boy leaving our leaking lunch bags and bland school lunches for another day. She may have had to rethink that after my pal and I dashed her dining budget for he year every ten tests. This is when the love affair with words began and has never left my heart!
Thanks, Melinda, for giving us this glimpse of the treasure trove of blessings and memories God has poured into your life.
let’s try joyfulmombaude@blogspot.com
Cherise, you and I are kindred spirits. The pen is a gift from God, isn’t it? Those little motivators given by God shaped our lives and drew us toward what he had designed us to do. Renee, thanks for sharing your blogsite.
Coming up: a blog on how God uses the “dark stuff” and later how God uses the type of seemingly small things, such as that contest shared by Cherise. Thank you everyone for the great discussion. I’m trying to discern if a Monday posting is better than a Friday posting or vice versa, so might float out that next post today.