Starting Points

Sometimes I think back to Etta Bend, to the middle child in a family of three girls and one boy who grew up there, as the starting point for my family, at least for my mother’s branch. Then, of course Dad’s side had another starting point in Mena, Arkansas. From those beginnings came (so far) five, six, seven generations, each generation a new family branching out with new starts. I can see why genealogists make diagrams which they call family trees. They mark one place or the other as the trunk, the origins as the roots, and succeeding generations as the branches. No matter where family members go or what experiences we have, we had the same beginning, that intangible thread that won’t be broken, the cord that marks us as a family.

Life is a series of starting points. In Tahlequah, I often think of the General Baptist Church as a beginning of sorts. We who attended were part of another family, a Christian family. It was a small church. Sunday school groups, choir, musicians, we prayed together, sang together, and shared a part of our life stories. From that church, we branched out in many different directions, going many different ways, but that was a starting point for many of us on a Christian journey. No matter where we are or where the road has led us, we will always have that in common, our starting point.

A move to a new location, a new school, a marriage, a new baby, that first hopeful manuscript mailed to a publisher, a new job, all these are starting points. Maybe that’s why I like mornings. Night has ended but with an ending, there is a new beginning. And hope. And life. And opportunities. “Every day is a new beginning; every morn is the world made new.” A starting point.