A few years ago, I found out my husband can trace his lineage back to 1650.

His family’s roots reach deep into the soil of Collelongo, a mountain village in southern Italy. There are records, names, and stories of his people. When he was a kid growing up in a small midwestern town, the community would gather each year for the St. Rocco’s picnic — a yearly celebration that brought together descendants of Collelongo. Whether they realized it or not, that shared tradition served as a grounding force in their lives. Their roots were visible, celebrated, intact.

When I learned this, I was happy for my husband but also heartbroken over my own heritage. At the time, I barely knew who my grandparents were. I couldn’t name more than one great-grandparent. There were no dusty documents or home videos connecting me to a homeland. No saints, no picnics, no lineages printed out on the back church programs. Just gaps, silence, and loss.

I felt like an orphan. Actually, more truthfully, I felt robbed. Because, literally, my people were taken from their land, stripped of their language and culture, renamed, and sold. My ancestors endured the dehumanizing brutality of slavery and carried its legacy for generations. Not only that, but somewhere in the midst of all that suffering and survival, records were lost, some were never even written at all. 

What do you do when your roots are hidden? What do you do when you long to belong, but you don’t know where — or who — you come from?

That question started me on a journey of leaning into my identity as a Black woman. I studied history. I sat with my grief. I wrestled with theology and trauma. And, slowly, I began to find God not just in heaven, but in my heritage. In the silence, I started to hear stories. In the gaps, I saw grace.

Then, in 2016, something changed. At a family reunion (a classic Black family cookout, might I add, with matching T-shirts and all), I was handed a packet of research compiled by some distant relatives on my mother’s side. I opened the pages and there she was.

Feely. My great-great-great-great-grandmother. An enslaved woman who had lived on a plantation in Wake County, North Carolina. 

A name.
A life.
A root.

I wept. Because, for the first time, I could reach back and grab hold of something. Someone. I wasn’t an orphan. I was the daughter of Feely. A descendant of a people who endured pain, who prayed and loved and survived so I could be here today. 

Romans 11 NIV speaks of being “grafted in” — of once being a wild olive shoot, now sharing in the nourishing root of something cultivated. Paul was writing to Gentile believers, reminding them that their inclusion in the family of God wasn’t a mistake or an afterthought.

They belonged. And so do we.

Even when the family tree is fractured. Even when the records are gone. Even when all you have is one name and the weight of what was lost. In Christ, we are not rootless. We are grafted in, joined into God’s love, God’s promise, and God’s people. We are part of a holy lineage. 

Maybe you’ve felt what I’ve felt — disconnected, disqualified, or distant. Maybe your story has gaps and grief, too. But, friend, let me tell you this. Your roots go deeper than the eye can see. Your belonging is not measured by what’s been documented, but by what God has declared. 

You are known.
You are held.
You are home.

Indeed, you are blessed with belonging through the bloodline of Christ.

Leave a Comment