Surprise Finds

In the midst of the chaos last week with the trailer, we made two surprise discoveries at the campground.

The first day we had to stay at the campground we had a very late morning as Carl made eggs and bacon and biscuits. It was very delicious but is a time consuming meal to fix for 10 people. Two packs of bacon fried up on the teeny tiny trailer stovetop takes a while. The biscuits had to be cooked in two rounds in the tiny oven. It was all worth it though. While breakfast clean up was going on I sent the kids outside to explore. We basically had the campground all to ourselves. Not too many people go camping in the dead of winter. Especially when there is freezing rain in the forecast. In Concord we were outside of the winter storm warning so we just had rain. The kids had a blast running around the empty campground getting muddy.

William made the first surprise discovery. He looked up in a tree and saw an interesting knot. It looked like it had something sticking up out of it. Being the curious young man he is he stuck his hand in the knot and pulled out what looked like a film canister. He brought it me and we had fin hypothesizing about what could be in it. We opened and it took us a while to figure out what it was. At first it looked like a bunch of numbers and names written on several pieces of paper. When we looked closer and found the first page we were pleasantly surprised. The little handmade notepad had been placed by a family camping in 2010. It had been found and signed many times. There was empty space at the end of the list so we signed our family name and the dates we were at the campground. What a pleasant surprise. We even told Angela, our service rep, and she said that she had never heard of anything like this and she has worked for them for a while. It made me start thinking about what kind of mark is our family leaving on this world. What are we leaving behind for those who come behind us?

Unrolling the discovery.



The family that first placed the list in 2010.

Adding our name to the list.

Placing the canister back into its original place.

 

Carl made the second and more amazing discovery. The campground is kind of drab with no real trees and is just rows of space to park RV’s. You can tell that they are designed for the race days when thousands of people come to the Speedway. There really is nothing there. I was in the trailer cleaning up when I looked at the window and saw all the kids and Carl gathered around under one of the trees. I went out to discover what they had found expecting it to be some sort of critter or something. What I saw had me running back to the trailer to get my camera. I could not believe that we had found what we saw where we saw it.

In the middle of the campground were 5 or 6 old gravestones that were surrounded by stone markers. No fence to protect. Nothing. These gravestones were broken and worn as they dated back to the early…1800’s. We were in shock. What were these doing here in the middle of the campground. I started reading the ones that weren’t too faded and found a small treasure that brought joy to my heart. There were several revolutionary war soldiers and their wives. Some were just basic he was born, he served his country, he died. Two though, stuck out to me. They were of two women and what was written about them gives me something to strive for. One read “The friend of the needy – A Mother to the Motherless” and underneath that was “In her tongue is the law of kindness.” Wow! Can that be said of me? Is kindness in my mouth? What a convicting statement. It made me think about what my children will write on my gravestone when I am gone. “She yelled all the time” is not what I want written or be remembered by. I have been thinking about that ever since we found the gravestones. What a legacy this young woman left to those around her.

The second one that stood out was for a young woman who died when she was just 19 years old but left quite a legacy. She was married and her husband dedicated a memorial to her and what he wrote volumes about how this teenager lived her life. It kind of is hard to read as this was one of the ones that was broken. It says “The love of her neighbor (I think) was the genuine effect of her love of God.” The last statement reads “Her resignation was the fruit of her faith and she died in Hope because she had lived a Christian.” Wow again. Something to aspire to. What a legacy she left in her short life here on earth.

It just got me thinking. What kind of mark am I leaving here in this earth? Two hundred years from now what will people remember me by. What will my gravestone say? What will my children choose to put on my gravestone as a legacy to future generations. I keep thinking of the legacy of the pilgrims. They had a 500 year vision for their descendants. Being a direct descendant of William Bradford, I am part of that legacy and so are my children and grandchildren. What kind of legacy am I leaving? Am I continuing in the ways of the pilgrims or even the early church believers? Am I doing things here today that will last or wither away? Where is my heart truly? Very deep questions but I believe ones that God would have me dwell on and meditate on. So, watch out for God may have a lesson for you to learn in the least likely of places. For me it was in the middle of a campground on a rainy, dreary day in January.