Every Family Has Stories Worth Remembering

There is an old saying, “You can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your family.” Every family has stories they celebrate and stories they would rather keep hidden. Yet those hidden stories are just as much a part of who we are.

Growing up, I never knew my grandparents. They had all died before I was born. For many years, I knew very little about my family’s past. That changed when my oldest sister, Sue, and I began researching our family tree. What we discovered reminded me of the genealogy of Jesus.

Jesus’ family tree includes people like Rahab, the prostitute from Jericho, and Ruth, the Moabite woman. Their stories remind us that God has always worked through imperfect people and unexpected circumstances.

Our family had its own unexpected stories.

My paternal grandmother, Emma McBride Pearson, was born out of an affair between my great-grandmother and a married Baptist preacher. Yet Grandma Emma grew into a remarkable woman. She and my grandfather raised fourteen children. According to my aunts and uncles, she was a loving, devoted mother and was known throughout the county as its champion speller.

My maternal grandmother, Floy Ann Walters, also entered the world under difficult circumstances. Her mother operated a brothel, and her father was a married farmer who had no children with his wife. Grandma Floy married my grandfather, James Samuel McGill, and together they had seven children.

Then tragedy struck.

In 1921, my grandfather was killed during a fight with one of his brothers. Suddenly widowed with seven children, Grandma Floy struggled to survive. Eventually, the children were scattered among relatives. My mother was raised in several different homes, worked as a maid for the families who took her in, and was eventually sent to a reformatory school.

For most of her life, Mother carried deep bitterness toward her own mother. She believed she had been abandoned.

After Sue and I uncovered our family’s history, I spent many evenings sitting with Mother, sharing what we had discovered. Together we pieced together the story behind the story. She began to understand the impossible circumstances her mother had faced as a young widow with seven children and few options.

Something beautiful happened.

As understanding grew, bitterness slowly gave way to compassion. Compassion opened the door to forgiveness. I watched my mother’s smile become broader and her laughter more genuine. It was as though a burden she had carried for decades had finally been laid down.

Looking back, I believe Mother and I shared what I can only describe as a “Peter experience.”

When Peter entered the home of Cornelius, God taught him, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” (Acts 10:15)

That lesson reaches beyond food laws. It reminds us not to define people solely by their failures, their circumstances, or the painful chapters of their lives. God’s grace has a way of rewriting stories.

Every family has stories worth remembering—not because they are perfect, but because they reveal how mercy, forgiveness, and grace can triumph over shame.

Perhaps the greatest inheritance we can leave our children is not a perfect family history, but the courage to tell the truth, the wisdom to understand it, and the grace to forgive.