Beyond Fiction

I love genealogy. Researching and finding new ancestors is always fun for me. However, there are some drawbacks! Every now and then you run across something that makes you wish you weren’t doing this! Thank goodness I can recoup from those times quickly!

What times am I talking about? Well, since I have started doing genealogy I have learned a new meaning to the scriptural saying “Study to be quiet!” (Phillipians 4:11). I have tried to become a good listener, to be quiet and to study what the person is saying! Sometimes, however, what they are saying turns into something I don’t really want to hear.

How do you react when someone tells you something out of the clear blue that you know you could never publish in your research? Furthermore, how can you not feel a lack of respect for you from someone dumping information in your lap that burdens you down with a secret that should have never been told?

Granted, I want everyone to feel free to talk to me without hesitation. That is why most of the time I just try my best to get the conversation to go a different direction.

Clearly, you can see the difference a couple of generations can make. What some of the older folks tell you you now they would never say in public! Some of the language used is so definitely and thankfully out of style today!

What is my point in this session of writing today? I really don’t know! I just wanted to get something off of my shoulders. No, I will not disclose any information that has been granted to me privately, except of course if it was something illegal that was going on right this moment! I have discovered an unwelcome, yet neccessary burden that comes along with doing genealogy. Sometimes to find your forebears you must bear some awful heavy secrets!

To all those who are staying steady in your research, even through all the unwelcome things that are thrown your way, I salute you! Everyday I research I find that I myself have grown a little more! I have learned to respect things in a way I never thought I could and I have learned to hold close the secrets that I have been intrusted with! I feel sometimes that genealogy has helped me to actually grow into a decent human being.

That is definitely a new take on genealogy from me!

Thanks!