Legacy!

Photo from Brooklyn Teen Challenge archives

I love this photo!

This is my Grandma Wilkerson. She is my father’s mother, and this photo captures her familiar smile and an expression that I remember fondly.

I smile when I think about her. She was such a unique woman.

I was blessed with two very different grandmothers. I unfortunately never knew my grandfathers, so my grandmothers were what I knew of both sides of my family heritage.

I had the privilege of experiencing the typical “cookie grandma” on my mother’s side. Oh, how I still recall the smell of warm pies and homemade donuts in Grammie Hudson’s house. (I wrote about her here.)  She was kind of like your storybook grandmother. Her delicious home cooked meals, her crocheted handmade gifts, the rocking chair that rocked countless babies, and her long arthritic fingers that would cup my chin in her hands and offer up kisses. I am fighting back the tears remembering her. I miss Grammie Hudson!

But Grandma Wilkerson was a different sort of grandmother, and I learned to appreciate her for being atypical. I laugh remembering how she would offer up whatever I could find in her refrigerator to eat; which was usually an overripe slice of watermelon and a 2-liter bottle of flat Dr. Pepper. I don’t recall a rocking chair in her house. But I do recall her tattered and overused Bible on the coffee table. I remember staying with her as a young teenager and waking up to hear her humming church hymns in her room as she was getting ready for the day. My Grandma Wilkerson was a woman of deep faith and anyone who had the privilege of knowing her, found this out very quickly.

She was also a stubborn woman and would offer up her opinions regularly even when uncalled for. But any family member would tell you, that what Grandma Wilkerson lacked in motherly affection she made up for on her knees in prayer. She fought many family battles through her worn Bible and her private time with God.

When I was writing my book, Giving Hope an Address, about my family and the founding of the Teen Challenge ministry, Grandma came to mind often. I wrote about her in my story, but my book chronicles her in a time before I was born. I was the youngest of the grandchildren, so I knew an older Ann Wilkerson than I had written in my book.

But let me back up a little in my thoughts to get you to the point of this blog post…

Before I wrote my book, that shares the legacy of the Teen Challenge ministry and the legacy of the Wilkerson family, I had to come to terms with that dreaded word called legacy. I hated that word and everything I thought it represented.

To me, legacy carried every painful family experience, every character flaw I saw in family members, every expectation that family did not live up to in my mind, and I let it all root in my heart.  And it grew into bitterness and resentment. I let walls build up inside me, and each wall cast a shadow against the words family, legacy, and even ministry.

But praise God, the walls are gone! How?—By God showing me in His mercy my true family story.

He graciously and lovingly reminded me that the story I was to write was not about me. It was about God and how He uses all of us—despite our flaws—to write a bigger story as followers of Christ. A gospel story.

If you call yourself a follower of Christ, you immediately join a much bigger family. Legacy is your day-to-day interactions with those around you: family, friends, church members, those you work with… the list goes on. Legacy is how we live out the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It is not pride in our heritage or anger from a dysfunctional upbringing. Legacy is the grace of God that reminds me; it’s not about me.  There is a much bigger picture to legacy, and it is rooted in our faithful obedience and love for God. And yes, even in the obedience through our painful family circumstances.

I was recently reminded of this bigger picture through this beautiful example.

In the late 1960’s, Grandma Wilkerson had a coffee-house ministry in Greenwich Village, Manhattan. (I know, cool right?!) She told a man named Kurt Haas about the saving power of Jesus Christ, and his life was forever changed. He recently left this Facebook post next to Mom Wilkerson’s (as she was called) photo:

Photo taken from Kurt Haas.

“Wherever we go in life we leave footprints, whether they be good or bad, and 49 years ago on September 14, 1969, Mom Wilkerson left not only her footprints in my life but lovingly, after many months of sharing the love of Christ with me, she led me to the Master’s feet. Yes, Mom believed in me and never gave up on me. Thanks, Mom for sharing the light with me. Now I am sharing it with others.”   

Kurt has served the Lord faithfully for many years as a prison chaplain. He recently told me that when my grandmother was alive, he would often send her flowers to commemorate the day she brought him to the knowledge of the saving power of Jesus Christ.

That, my friends, is legacy!

I’ll continue to recall all the fond memories of Grandma Wilkerson. They’ll probably be mixed in with her quirks and stubborn ways, but the most important thing she’ll remind me of is the real definition of the word legacy. She lived that out in her life.

This quote reminded me of Grandma:

“The central ingredient to a divine legacy is godliness: to know God, to walk in His ways, and to teach future generations who He is.” (Kelly Minter)

And the most significant thing about that word legacy is that you don’t need to have children to offer that to the world.

Our stories, our family legacies, they are all linked by the cord of the gospel. God will continue to use imperfect people for His will and His glory. And I am so thankful that He does despite my often limited God view.

To read more about my family’s “bigger picture legacy story,” you can buy my book

on Amazon

or at Barnes & Noble.