From This Stick

I found out this morning that another one of my cousins from my Dad’s side of the family was sentenced to 14 years in prison on drug related charges.   And I took the news hard.

So much so that I’ve been surprised with my own reaction.  To be honest, I wouldn’t know this kid if I saw him.  I don’t even know his real name.  We don’t have a relationship and I’m not even sure that he knows that I exist.

But I get him off my mind.

We are family.  We share the same blood and the some of the same genetic make up.  We share grandparents and great grandparents.  And we once shared a last name.

I’m not sure why I care so much.  But maybe it’s this:

De te palo, tal astilla.

In English we would use that phrase to mean “like father, like son”. 

But that’s not what those words mean.  Their literal translation is “from this stick, this splinter”.

Maybe that’s it. 

Maybe that’s why I can’t stop thinking about him today. 

Maybe it’s because I know that I was supposed to be him.  Maybe it’s because I know the research on addictions.  I know the genetic predispositions to things that are ingrained in a family’s legacy.  Their literal DNA.

Maybe it’s because the family name that we share has a literal translation of it’s own.   

Liar.  Cheater.  Abuser.  Thief.  Addict.

And maybe it’s because I spent so much time trying to convince everyone that I was more than the sum of my family’s sins that I forgot. 

 

Maybe I forgot until today that the reason why my life doesn’t look like his actually has nothing to do with me.  

Maybe it’s that, in my need for people to know that I was different from them, I forgot why I was different.  I forgot that I didn’t earn a better way of life.  I forgot that being “good” wasn’t what separated me from them.

Maybe I forgot until today that I didn’t deserve it. 

But that I was gifted it.  And in forgetting the gift, I ‘ve failed to give thanks to the gifter.

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.  Ephesians 2:8 

Thanks be to God.