Genes or Heart?

I thought about the whole notion of "reproduction," and what it really means to replicate yourself. Is it merely about the passing on of eyes and chins and hair color? Or is it, rather, the replication of the heart? Do we leave a bigger mark by passing on our genes, or our thoughts?
~Shannon Woodward, author of Inconceivable: Finding Peace in the Midst of Infertility~

This has been an interesting question to ponder over the weekend. It is so cool to me when someone comments that my eldest daughter looks just like her daddy (with her mommy's dimples). When she gazes into my eyes, they are his eyes with her wonder and amazement. And I can easily get lost in them. My youngest daughter is the spitting image of my grandmother (Pauline). Glimpses of her make me smile and cry at the same time as I realize I have the treasured blessing of my grandmother with me all the time, and that my grandmother never got to see this treasure. These physical representations of our family are all the more poignant because of our struggle to get here. In times of melancholy I wonder what the two angels we lost would have looked like. In our journey with fertility issues, we had come to peace with the fact that most likely we would never have children that carried on our genes. So the miracle of the two that carry those genes constantly amazes me. But as much as I adore the physical likeness, there is a likeness that I hope becomes more and more apparent as they grow older.

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:28

It is the image of God that I want to shine in my two girls. I want the eldest to not only look like her Daddy, but have the awesome gift of faith and his heart to share his gifts in the church. I want the little one to not only look like my grandmother, but to grow into an awesome woman of God just like her great-grandmother was. Because ultimately, there are lots of days I can't recall the specific smile or a particular feature of a person, but I do recall how they represented God with their life. The "replication of the heart" is what is the most important. The development of a heart for and like Jesus is what I want to nurture the most. I want them to find their faith in Christ and to grow in that faith their entire lives. That faith is what will sustain them in the hard times. It is what will bring them to experience true joy in the good times. It is the only thing that will secure them for eternity. Family pedigree means nothing for eternity, only the state of the heart.

My Ladies Bible Study was discussing this a few weeks ago. We were naming the people in our lives who had developed our faith by discipling us or leading us to Christ or just by living a life like Jesus that we wanted. What we found astonishing was that each of us had been discipled and led and nurtured by a "childless" woman somewhere in our past. We were all impacted by someone who, although she had no children of her own, had poured her life into nurturing others. These ladies seemed to have found the same answer that the author of this week's quote had found. It was not just about passing on genetics, it was replicating God's heart.

I'm thankful for the persons in my past that helped to replicate God's heart in me. I'm thankful that there are persons in my life still replicating God's heart in me. I pray that I'll be able to help my genetic representations also become spiritual replications of the Image of God. With God's help and guidance, and the input of wise Christians around me, may this come to pass. Blessings to each of you today. Thanks for stopping by.

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