Ripplemaker

I’ve spent a lot of time with dead people recently. Or at least reading about them.

Over Thanksgiving, my grandpa handed off to me 20 years worth of work. He’s slowly but surely pulled together a 250 to 300-page, 1st-person account (genealogy) of our family, dating back to the early 1800s. I’m honored that he would like me to edit the piece, and already I have had a blast reading stories about my great-great grandparents!

Today, I find myself digging through a book called A Centenary History searching for stories and dates for a piece I’m writing at work about the university’s archives. The book chronicles the “Baptist pioneers who made history by serving humbly and without thought of recognition” between the years 1852 and 1952. It's so old that its dusty pages are making me sneeze!

But I have to tell you, reading the stories of so many people from so many generations ago can make one feel small. I am just one little-biddy person who happens to be alive in the year 2009. Will I be just a name in a book someday? One of many?

Over snickerdoodles and coffee a couple weeks ago, I had the privilege of interviewing a 90-year-old woman—a spitfire—named Nancy. In her home, we chatted and she shared what it was like to be the wife of a university president for some 20 years. Towards the end of our conversation, she assured me that she doesn’t intend to die anytime soon, yet she knows she’s near death, considering her life in its entirety. And now near death, she can see so much more clearly that every decision we make has a ripple effect. We are all ripplemakers, she said. She reminded me that I’m—you’re—much more than a name in a book on a dusty shelf.

Her words: “God has put you on this earth for a very brief, but specific period of life. It’s just a little space in eternity. But it’s during this time that you make big decisions and they affect those around you...and they affect your eternity…”