The fossils we leave behind

and a new mixed media collage and poem in my paper bag series

“What Existed, What Died”, mixed media collage - with specimens from my own collection - and poem, “What Existed, What Died”, below

The fossils we leave behind

Fossils are fascinating. They hold stories that remain long after the life that belonged to them have returned to the dust. Some are found, and their stories are handled and passed along, even through the generations. While some remain buried, holding stories that will never be told.

What fossils remain of us after our bodies return to dust?

Not our skulls, or grandpa’s harmonica, or mom’s amethyst necklace. Not even our children. What of the stories we told, held, or lived will be fossilized and handled, handed through generations, even beyond our time here on earth?

Mel Robbins, author, podcaster and one of the world’s most influential people on motivation and change, often implores her followers to ask themselves the very important question: ‘What do I really want?’ because we can’t go out and do it if we don’t know what it is.

I think that’s super important work, and for what it’s worth, extremely challenging to nail, but little ‘ole me is wondering, what if we worked backwards for a moment, and thought about what we hope to leave behind after we’ve done what we really wanted to do.

My grandparents, Frank and Pauline, or Mamaw and Papaw as I affectionately call them, seem to come up often in my therapy sessions. As I explore my childhood, attachment, and the stories of my youth, it’s clear that Mamaw and Papaw were an anchor for me in my life. And not just for me, all of the cousins feel the same way. My therapist asked, “What was it about them that was so great?" And without hesitation, I replied, “They just exuded love, warmth, and safety, always, and in every situation, and to every person.”

Mamaw and Papaw didn’t just know Jesus, they intimately and personally walked with him, talked with him, praised and honored him in everything they did, but not in a churchy or in-your-face way. They just lived LOVE. It’s easy to live LOVE when you’re so inherently rooted in it, when you inhale and exhale the very thing LOVE is, when you’re life stories are all written around it - around Jesus. And it wasn’t just us kids who felt this, it was everyone who knew them. It was everyone they ever encountered…from the three widows my Papaw would leave extra early on Sunday morning to go pick up on the other side of the twisty, curvy West Virginia mountains, switchback after switchback, just to bring them to the church where he preached at on Sunday mornings, and then drove them back home after service was over and he’d completed his pastorly duties, to the families Mamaw covered and smothered with her intercessory prayers every single night, prayers that seemed to last for hours, prayers that brought tears streaming down her face and made her voice quiver, prayers like they were members of her own family.

Mamaw and Papaw have long been gone from this earth, but decades later they are still in stories, still infiltrating memories, drumming up nostalgia, and changing lives. They are changing lives of people they never even met because of what they left behind. I am a better woman and mother because what they left behind and my children will be, too. It’s a legacy of love. That’s a treasure worth more than finding any buried fossil.

What stories will remain here after we’ve returned to dust? What stories do you want people to hold and pass along about you? What if there were none. What if they were not what you’d hope for? What if we held too tightly or for too long onto the stories that served our broken parts instead of our healing and our pain instead of all the beauty we saw, despite the pain?

I can assure you that God is a God of change and he is always working behind the scenes, making all things new. He’s in the beauty business - the turning ashes to beauty business. We may believe we are too old, or it’s too late, or something is too hard, or not worth it but he is already making a way, right now.

What fossils will we leave behind?

“Do not remember the former things,
Nor carefully consider things of the past.
Behold, I will do something new;
Now it will spring forth;
Will you not know it?
I will even make a roadway in the wilderness,
Rivers in the wasteland…”

- Isaiah 43:18-19

What Existed, What Died

What breathed, what bled, what fought, what cried,

What slept, what praised, what existed, what died –

Minerals and elements formed rich dust,

Gathered masterfully from Earth’s crust.

Flesh and blood, and Breath of Life then came;

Upon each was given purpose, to glorify his name.

And when their time ended, as they returned to the earth,

The ground re-mineralized, preparing for new birth.

From his hands and breath a new creature is made,

While buried in the dirt are stories displayed.

Though many remain hidden, never to be discovered,

Other stories are unearthed, released and uncovered -

Revealing a greater purpose of life and merely being,

One of intelligent design and a love that is most pleasing.

Are we not from the same dirt and even more so, masterfully created -

And when to dust we return, will our stories that remain be a testimony or bated?

While Breath of Life still resides inside our bodies and bones,

Let our stories bear witness to the greatest love ever known.

What breathed, what bled, what fought, what cried –

What slept, what praised, what existed, what died.