To hang a picture.

This was published originally in our family newsletter this winter, with some minor changes.

For any of you that have visited my grandparents house, it's something striking. Everyone in the family's face smiles back at you as soon as you walk in, because over the couch, on a subtle, but distinct, pastel Easter dress green wall, lives each and every member of the family, frozen in time and ever present in pictures. Some photos new, others are older than I am of faces I never got to see in person. 

I moved away for college. It was a great experience, but extremely difficult to walk away from my family. I love them very much. I wondered if the great-grand kids of the family would even know me when I came home for visits. They were so young. Granny Lovell would ask who that was when I walked in, and they'd say Jodi. I was shocked a child so young would remember. One day I caught her though. Granny was quizzing one of the kids on the pictures on the wall. Making sure they knew who their family was. I think it's part of what keeps the family so close. We know that we have to take care of the pictures on the wall, and each other.

 So for Christmas this year, through a series of Facebook messages, we decided to change the wall. As bold a move a it was, the old gold frames got replaced with black modern frames. (what grandparent doesn't want to get their living room redecorated with a "modern" touch for Christmas)  

So the wall lives on. It's an amazing testament to the family I love. The family that still goes camping together every year. The family that, even though it continues to grow, still manages to cram into Granny's house every month or two. Even though the great-grand kids never met my mother, they know her face and name because of that wall. And I like to think that one day, trusting Jesus for their salvation, they'll walk into heaven and bump into my mom, or great granny Westmoreland, and remember the wall, and praise God all the more for the genealogy of faith that they could trace on Granny's wall.