A Bundle of Myrrh

Thank you Kristi for passing along the link to this post, What We Lose With Just Two Children Per Family.

After reading it I had to share with you all a little about the family I come from. My mama’s Mama and Daddy (my Grandma Sissy and Grumpy or Babe as many called him) were blessed with 11 children. My little aunt Gloria died when she was just 2 years old, the other 10 grew and lived together surprisingly well and with much happiness all the way to grown up status.

Here is a photo taken this last Thanksgiving at my uncle’s house in Alabama. I have to let you know this is only a PORTION of my extended family.

Pictured here are 12 of my aunts and uncles, 18 of my first cousins and 26 of my first cousins’ children.

Not pictured are the other 40 descendants of my grandparents, Thomas and Muriel Mackin. They left behind a great heritage of 81 children plus their spouses, 94 souls in all….and counting!

When I look at pictures like this of my Grandparents children I’m at a loss for words. All these people came from the union of just those two Grandparents of mine. They didn’t have a lot of money, but they were truly rich.

Their wealth can’t be compared to any other kinds of riches or conveniences or pleasures or comforts in this world. Their investments weren’t in stocks, but in people, in life.

I think of how hard raising 6 boys and 4 girls was for her and my Grandpa. My Grandma was pregnant for 8 years of her life! Money was tight, illness would stream through all of them on occasion.

My Grandma kept a house and all these children, backwards and in heels, during an age when there weren’t dishwashers other than your own hands, large capacity washers and dryers like we have now, carpools or Sam’s Club. That was hard. Everyone in a family this large made sacrifices.

But how could you look into the faces of all these their children and say it wasn’t worth it?

Here is one more thing I wanted to share with you. A message one of my uncles sent after seeing that Thanksgiving photo. He wrote:

“I just want to say that I’m happy and proud that Sissy and Baby “bred like rabbits,” as Pope Francis put it.

 

The blessing of more children from God isn’t just for a mother and a father but for their children and for their children’s children.  I’m blessed with a long list of wonderful aunts and uncles and cousins. I’m so thankful that my grandparents, for whatever reasons they had, let God give all of us to each other.

 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 4th, 2015 at 9:54 am and is filed under Family and Friends, Life Links. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.