Do you like where you were born?
Did you stay there for very long? Do you have good memories, or did you leave there as quick as your feet could carry you?
I’ll bet I could get some interesting answers to those questions.
Much of the issue of connecting to our roots is about our emotional perspective. Even if we acknowledge the data of where we came from, who we are, and our experiences, it does not really become a part of us until we emotionally own it. In order to emotionally own it, we need to see the value – God’s fingerprints! – and so many times the value is covered up by our pain. The enemy works pretty hard to make that happen. When our time is fractured, we are emotionally vulnerable and blocked from the resources of our past.
I had an interesting shock when I started thinking about my place of birth.
As you may have already gathered, this issue of emotional rootedness is important to me. It is so important that I have traveled overseas in my pursuit of connecting to my past and the land of my ancestors. I have been to England and to France, where my ancestors on the Caldecourt side are primarily from. I have invested a great deal of time, effort, and money in that process. I even went to all the trouble to forgive my own people (the French) for driving us (Huguenots) out of the country, so that I could reconcile with my French blood.
But do you think I have ever been to Ottawa, Illinois, here in my very own country?
Only once. I was born there.
It shocked me that for all the passion I have for exploring my roots, the thought never crossed my mind to go back to the city of my birth. I KNOW how important it is. I am writing this post because of the importance of the city where you were born. It matters. It is part of your heritage and there are resources available from there. You could have been born anywhere on earth, and God picked the place.
So, why have I been so oblivious to Ottawa all these years? Well, I think part of it is because of my parent’s emotional perspective when they left. They were going back to Michigan (where I grew up) where all their family was, and Illinois was SO over. I also have a hunch that the enemy has been working hard to hide it from me all these years because he knows trouble will happen when I go.
And boy, am I going!
Because so many of us live in cultures where land is no longer central, we often don’t attach much importance to it. If there is cultural shame attached to the land, we might even do our best to forget. But there was purpose in where you were born, and it does matter to God. He was very specific about where Jesus was born, He had planned it for generations in advance. He also went to the trouble of sending everyone else back to their birth towns at the same time. Something in the dynamics of the land and human community is impacted by our being born there.
I’d like to encourage you to be intentional about this.
Look at it from two angles. One is the ancestral perspective. I briefly mentioned my traveling to England and France to connect with my heritage. That process unlocked some things in me. I know I received resources from the land while I was there. In France, I distinctly remember where I was when I reconciled with the persecution of the Huguenots and emotionally embraced the French as part of my heritage. My spirit and soul changed. There was a part of me that came alive. I knew there was now access for the generational blessings and resources from that part of my heritage to flow to me. I began to love the land.
In England it was different because I already loved it. I have loved all things English since early high school. My first experience on English soil was that I had come home. But in a similar sense, because of my emotional engagement with the history and the land, the resources God had placed there for me were activated and could flow.
In both cases, there was a measurable sense of solidness that came from an emotional anchor in the historical timeline, something bigger and broader than just my own existence.
The second angle is the beginning of your life. This is your place of birth. Have you ever asked God why you were born there? What does it mean? Why did He chose that city or that country? Are you at odds with it? If so, why? Can you partner with Him to heal the wounds, disempower the lies and let Him show you where His fingerprints are? What does He want to give you from that land? Whether at this moment you like it or not, it is a part of you. Throughout this entire process we are looking for ways that you can reconcile and engage with the things that have happened in your ancestry and lifetime. It does not mean that it will all be good, because that is certainly not the case. But even in the pain, you need to find where God was and heal that point of disconnect. Every part of you needs to be emotionally connected to the continuum of your existence. You can’t separate it out and place it on a shelf like a photo. It is a part of your life, even if you have grown beyond it and are a different person now. It can still offer the value of God’s fingerprints, the wisdom of experience, and the authority of having lived and learned. The land of your birth is a part of this process.
As for me, I am looking forward to what will happen when I go back to Ottawa, Illinois!
Beyond the Horizon 