Messy Fingerprints, Legacy and Influence
A week later they are still here. Smudgy little marks on my windows. I don’t want to wipe them off because they remind me of a curly red headed blue-eyed dolly that I love with all of my heart that had to go back home last Saturday. I was trying several attempts to photograph the fingerprints on my window, but it is nearly impossible. No matter which angle or what kind of light, I couldn’t capture it in the way I see it. If you look closely in this picture you might be able to make-out the blur of the fingerprints but they are illusive.
No matter, I know they are there and when the sun shines through the window it is a reminder of little Codi Joy’s presence in our home. I remember her squeals and laughter as she pressed her chubby little face against the window and expressed in her own 2-year-old language the beauty and wonder on the other side of the glass. How could I possibly wash that off? I won’t for a while because it is an imprint on my heart of the memories we made.
As I looked through the smudged glass this morning it made me think about the fingerprints we leave with others. We might not visibly see them on the glass of one’s soul, but they are there indelibly marked with our words and actions.
The good, the bad, our greatest and our worst moments leave marks on the people we do life with.
Love, grace, forgiveness and our choices etch themselves and rub off day in and day out.
My grandmother indelibly left her fingerprints on my life. Many people wouldn’t know but those marks have shaped much of who I am. I think of her nearly every single day and aspire to grow old leaving the same kind of legacy that she worked at when she was alive. Her legacy of fingerprints on others is hard to capture in words. I don’t know if she really even thought about it much other than she lived and breathed out the faithfulness of God to those she touched.
She was kind, gracious, generous with all she possessed, soft-spoken, full of wisdom and knew how to make you feel like you were the most important person in the world.
She was a Jesus lover and walked her faith out with quiet gentleness, never pushy or self-righteous, never shaming or belittling in her correction.
She oozed love and those fingerprints on my life of grace and beauty have forever marked my soul. I want to be just like her when I grow up and leave the same kind of legacy for my grandchildren.
I know that the choices I make everyday become my influence and that influence will outlive my life and become my legacy. That is why it is so important to choose what kind of fingerprints I am going to leave and where I leave them. They might be illusive right now, but someday they will be visible on the lives I’ve been entrusted to love, nurture and bless.
So I think that I am just going to clean my windows but wipe around and leave the little circle of fingerprints for now because it is my legacy.
Recent Comments