Family

When my Grandmother passed away this past March, we found boxes of old photos just wasting away. With these photos were mounds of genealogy she had agreed to keep for the family.  No one had been allowed to see them or touch them until now.  I volunteered to preserve the photos, get them on CD's and pass them out to the main lines of the family.  My dad, as the eldest son, got the genealogy.

Yesterday, I was sitting at my parents' heavy, wooden table going through a few old photos with my dad hoping for names to add to my CD.  He gave me a few.  But with the rest, he was as clueless as I was.  We both agreed it was important to label pictures with more than "Here I is, Grandma"  as one photo said.

He shared how he is going through all our family photos and doing just what I am doing. Even just in the almost fifty years as a family, he and my mother have to think hard on places and years. Important to label!

As we were going through the photos, I received a stressing phone call from a dear friend.  I went from enjoying old family to mourning young family.  She had just lost her son,  That got me thinking about my mother.  Fifteen years ago, her brother, who was an insurance salesman, was lured to a parking lot for a supposed claim and shot point blank.  Then, I thought about my brother, who just this summer lost a dear friend to a hate crime.  And so my mine ran on--friends, family and lost loved ones.

Family and friends.  What are they to us?  How do we treat them? Do they know we love them?

Life is short.  We don't know if we are here for twenty minutes or twenty years.  We need to make every moment count and treat those around us with respect--whether they're family or friends.  I know we try are best and often people get under our skin.

A few weeks ago, I heard a talk in church that impressed me.  A young father told me when he was about twenty-one, he really was having a hard time getting on with his siblings.  He was single and just moved back home after college.  They kept 'pushing his buttons.'  He said an older friend told him if he couldn't find what it is in him that needed to change or control, his siblings would keep pushing buttons.  And he would keep getting upset and the cycle would never change.  And if he couldn't learn to deal his siblings, he couldn't learn to deal a wife or kids.  That one bit of advice made him look at his life and see what needed to change.

So what do we need to change?  I think this week I am going to look in the mirror every day and ask myself that:  Brenda--what do YOU need to change?

My paternal great-grandfather Anglo Moore  Saxton
June 1918  WWI

My paternal grandmother Hellen Leuvica Saxton
Dec 1944

Family Fun in Yellowstone Oct 2006
overlooking Yellowstone Falls and freezing
Photo By Virginia Stevens
l to r: Rick Segeberg, Taylor Segeberg, Brenda Segeberg, Jessica Segeberg, Peige Stevens

Dino Digging in Vernal    October 2005
l-r: Virginia Stevens, Jessica Segeberg, Taylor Segeberg, Peige Stevens

Charlotte Sophia  'Lottie' Simon
My maternal great-grandmother
about 1918

Muriel Naomi Mansfield
My maternal grandmother
about 1944