If you don't recount your family history, it will be lost. Honor your own stories and tell them too. The tales may not seem very important, but they are what binds families and makes each of us who we are.
Interpretation
Sharing family stories helps preserve history and strengthens bonds.
This quote emphasizes the importance of recounting and honoring family history. It suggests that by sharing our personal narratives, we not only keep these memories alive but also foster connections among family members, highlighting that these stories, regardless of their perceived significance, play a crucial role in shaping our identities and relationships.
In practice
In a family gathering, you could say, 'Remember what Madeleine L'Engle said about sharing our family stories; let’s recount some of our favorite memories together.'
Truth is what is true, and it's not necessarily factual. Truth and fact are not the same thing. Truth does not contradict or deny facts, but it goes through and beyond facts. This is something that it is very difficult for some people to understand. Truth can be dangerous.
George MacDonald gives me renewed strength during times of trouble--times when I have seen people tempted to deny God--when he says, "The Son of God suffered unto death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like his.
I never want to lose the story-loving child within me, or the adolescent, or the young woman, or the middle-aged one, because all together they help me to be fully alive on this journey, and show me that I must be willing to go where it takes me, even through the valley of the shadow.
The minute we begin to think we have all the answers, we forget the questions.
When we believe in the impossible, it becomes possible, and we can do all kinds of extraordinary things.
Rather than feeling lost and unimportant and meaningless, set against galaxies which go beyond the reach of the furthest telescopes, I feel that my life has meaning. Perhaps I should feel insignificant, but instead I feel a soaring in my heart that the God who could create all this — and out of nothing — can still count the hairs of my head.
My professional and personal roots in Alabama are deep and lasting.
People with children will know this: when the childcare is over, it's over on the dot. You immediately have to go into child mode; there's no down time.
I was, in reality, bred by my parents as my father's concubine... What we take for granted as the stability of family life may well depend on the sexual slavery of our children. What's more, this is a cynical arrangement our institutions have colluded to conceal.
When I looked at my mother, I always saw a bit of Ireland. And I suppose when I look to Ireland, I see a bit of my mother - her faith, her wit, her endurance.
Hey, look — Harry’s got a Weasley sweater, too!” Fred and George were wearing blue sweaters, one with a large yellow F on it, the other a G. “Harry’s is better than ours, though,” said Fred, holding up Harry’s sweater. “She obviously makes more of an effort if you’re not family.
You can't make your kids do anything. All you can do is make them wish they had. And then, they will make you wish you hadn't made them wish they had.
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