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!
Megan, this really blew me away, I have never thought of my city of Birth in this way, that is was an intentional act of God that determined the place.
My parents lived in a neighbouring country, the Kingdom of Swaziland, my mother was 43 and thought to be barren when I “happened along”.
Because of her age my mom consulted with a specialist in Johannesburg, so when the time came for me to be born, she travelled over the boarders to South Africa and I was born in a city in another country.
When I was 11 my dad died and we moved to South Africa to Johannesburg because my mom’s family were there.
I once left my home Jo’burg a mercy city for Cape Town and extorter city for 7 years for personal and work reasons and I could not wait to get back.
I am a Jo’burg girl to the roots, and my husband a Jo’burg boy, we have both lived away from it but are always drawn back to it, and now I believe that God has called us to heal the land there.
We are passionate about the city the good and bad bits and particularly love “old” Johannesburg.
We are moving house next month from a “new” area 50 years old to an old area where the house we are moving to is 100 years old and the area 125 years old.
I am SO excited, it is out of our usual stamping grounds, because where we live now is actually where I lived when we first moved from Swaziland.
But as I write this I reflect that we will be living only blocks from where my mother grew up in the 1920’s and not far from the hospital where John and I were both born …
I look on all of these facts with new eyes as I am looking for the why ….:-)
A few years ago I moved back to my home town after 15 ys away.
The actual site where I was born is now a home for elderly people where I sometimes go to sing and say a word from the Bible.
The other pastors in town think this is the hardest place to go because there is not much response from the people. They are the people that has Dementia and varying degree of Alzheimers, and physical illness as well.
I think this is the best place to be. They can’t say much, but the eyes of some is radiating joy, and suddenly a voice joins in when I sing one of the old songs. Even if their minds is not always there, their spirits are very much alive.
So that is my favorite place!
I have never before put that in connection with the fact that this is the exact place where I was born. It gives me something to think about…
Harald, how many people have an opportunity to do ministry in the place they were born? That is awesome. I commend you for going there and being lifegiving to the elderly and engaging their spirits.
Mary-Anne, I look forward to your process of finding the treasures in the land, and have to smile at the fact that you will be living so near to the place where you were born. Based on what you wrote above, it sounds like you “happened along” in Swaziland, but then born in South Africa? You might also look at the dynamics there. The land of conception is also significant, though for most people, it is the same as where they were born. But not for everyone, and I suspect God was intentional about that too! 🙂
Psalm 87 says that the city we are born in has a greater impact on us that our generational heritage.
Specifically, Gentiles from Babylon, Egypt, Philistia, Tyre and Ethiopia are marked by having been born in Jerusalem.
Their birth on that land will give them a spiritual bent toward Yahweh, in spite of their cultural heritage.
Thank-you that is exciting, I have always been fascinated that John and I were both born in the same hospital although 7 years apart and when I was being born he was living in LA with his parents who later returned to Johannesburg.
We met 27 years later and both have such a passion for our City. I visited a museum dedicated to a great leader in our country’s history yesterday and a quote from him resonated with my whole being.
When he travelled as a leader of the ANC to the US during the struggle years he was often asked if he would not rather live there in freedom than in South Africa as a second class citizen. He replied ” I love to travel, but the disparity I see challenges me to work harder to accomplish the same in my country, I love my home and hanker after no-one else’s”.
Thank you Megan! This has given me a lot to ponder! I was especially captivated by your comment on the importance of our birthplace! My mom traveled back to her hometown over 55 miles away to another state so that I would be born in Gary Indiana—the place my parents met, the place my great grandfather chose for the family business- The Dixie Dairy. My grandfather was the president of the Chamber of Commerce & the Rotary Club. I never lived there, but I have always had a fondness for the city, which I visited often as a child.
Once known as the City of the Century, Gary more recently has been distinguished as “the murder capitol of the U.S.” Despite many failed attempts to rejuvenate the city—Gary still bears the scars of white flight and race riots, corruption and a failed economy. The downtown area is still a ghost town of abandoned and boarded up buildings. The house my grandparents lived in is surrounded by collapsed and burned out houses.
YET—I feel compelled to visit! When I think about visiting, my spirit soars! (like the song “there is just one place, that can light my face”)… I find myself driving thru the town blessing the land and calling forth its original design—blessing it to reveal the goodness that God originally deposited in it.
I always thought I was being drawn back to redeem the land, but after reading your article, I am reminded that when I return from a visit, I have dreams about my inheritance.
Interestingly, Gary is dead to my mom and her family—the pain was too great to see how desolate the once thriving city is now. About 5 years ago, my eldest daughter asked me about the Dairy and we set off on a trek to see what was left of it. When we got there, it was like everything went our way—we were able to get into the Dairy and even recover some cool heirlooms that somehow hadn’t been destroyed or sold on Ebay. We tapped into what we now fondly call “the milk blessing” (the Dairy’s mission statement was “dedicated to the health of babies and children in its community.”) Since returning to Gary, I have found that in my work and ministry I have a unique anointing to present foundational concepts (milk) to women and youth. I regularly pour out the “milk blessing” onto land I work on and on the psych patients I work with.
I find it fascinating that most of my black friends tell me they are afraid to even drive thru the city—yet I have never been challenged or felt in danger—and believe me, as a white middle aged woman traveling alone – or with my daughter and granddaughter I really stand out! Yet, I feel this uncanny love for the land (even though it is so desolate)—and others must sense it.
Reading your article excited my spirit as I started to put all of this together! It never occurred to me that God would have a specific purpose for me to be born there—Now I am excited to ask God, “Why Gary??”
Hello Lisa,
Thank you for sharing this application, and it is always fun to see how God sends us in the right direction, even if we don’t have language for it. So, it will be exciting to see what comes of it, now that you can be even more intentional!
This post too has given me a lot to ponder.
I was born in Guatemala within the first year that my parents were the first missionaries for that particular mission. They were only there a few more years so I have no memory of that time. But they did take me back there when I was 12. Now I’m wondering what that visit did for me, and why was I born there.
I’ve lived in Ohio all my adult life and just sort of thought of Guatemala as a sort of a curious thing in my life and haven’t felt particularly drawn to the land or people.
I wonder what God will answer when I ask…
That will be a fun discovery process!!
Thanks, Megan!