There was a tree on our sheep farm in the South African outback that had a trunk that looked like it had tried to make a U-turn. Where it once grew straight it had taken a sharp right turn before continuing to grow up toward the sky.

The tree looked like that because one of my dad’s older brothers had crashed into it on a night he was drunk and lost control of his car at that bend in the road. And now there is a permanent bend in that tree.

Family trees are like that.

We grow up out of the soil of the stories that are so long ago and once upon a time that they might feel unconnected to our regular Tuesday afternoons. But, the branches in our family trees keep long records, ring upon ring, of where we come from and who we come from, and they map the ways in which we have changed directions.

We used to make fun of that tree. My father named it after his brother. We laughed when we passed it, a ridiculous landmark on our farm that made the brother ridiculous.

Years of laughter passed unchecked until a day when my father pushed pause on the story. Then rewind.

Then he recorded a new narrative. “That’s sad what we did, what I did — making fun of my brother like that. It’s ugly. I wish I’d never started calling that his tree.”

I listened in surprise. “That was so ugly, to make fun of a terrible moment in his life.”

And it was as if my father shed a skin, like the snakes he used to catch and raise and trade when he was a kid in boarding school. There it was: the old, dry, shriveled skin of petty meanness that didn’t fit him anymore.

The isiZulu word for “grace” is umusa. It is also a synonym for “humanity.” We are an interconnected species. Our family trees linked by root systems deep beneath the everyday surface of our lives.

When it comes to how we love or parent or forgive we are not starting from scratch. As much as I might have thought so in the early years of my marriage.

I am my father’s daughter. We worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — the God of generations. And there is only one beating heart of humanity — a single organism connected by vital arteries of history and memory and one divine and holy breath breathed into all of us.

And my father’s willingness to shed the skins he’d grown up in is the most shocking plot twist of my life.

Because for years he had lived in a box in my mind labeled “fear.”

I had packed it up tight when I left home and boarded a plane from South Africa to college in the States. I’d shoved the box on a back shelf in a back closet in the recesses of my mind. A place I forgot existed over decades of life away from the country of my childhood.

But history can’t be locked away. It is a living, breathing reality that beats in our ribcages. And for years I defaulted to parenting in anger like my father and grandfather before me without once considering that I was driving the same, well-worn path of my childhood.

I lived deep inside the snakeskin I hadn’t learned to shed yet.

Until the terrible day my mini-me stared at me out of eyes sinking below the surface of my rage, and I had a choice: I could push him under the water or I could reach out my hand to rescue him.

And I knew that if I wanted to rescue him, I would have to find a way to rescue myself. To shed the skin I’d grown up in.

But I was incapable of rescuing myself. History and my own story had proven this over and over. Instead, I recognized that the same God who had rescued Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would need to be the one to rescue me from being drowned by the history that lived in me so that I could rescue my son.

So I took all my faith and doubt, my family story and my desperation, to the God who once inspired the words of another sheep farmer, like my dad, who wrote,

I waited patiently for the Lord;
he turned to me and heard my cry.
He lifted me out of the slimy pit,
out of the mud and mire;
he set my feet on a rock
and gave me a firm place to stand.
Psalm 40:1–2 NIV

Because, no matter how deep into the narrative we are, the grace of the Gospel is that on ordinary Tuesdays it’s still not too late to write a new ending.

No matter what kind of history you inherited, it doesn’t have to be repeated. By the grace of a Savior who “moved into the neighborhood” (John 1:14 MSG) to get to know you and your storyline up close and personal, new endings are still waiting to be written in your bloodline.

—

This is an adapted excerpt from Lisa-Jo Baker’s new book, It Wasn’t Roaring, It Was Weeping.

When she found herself spiraling into a terrifying version of her father, screaming herself hoarse at her son, Lisa-Jo realized that to go forward — to refuse to repeat the sins of our fathers — we must first go back.

It Wasn’t Roaring, It Was Weeping is an honest and lyrical coming-of-age memoir of growing up in South Africa at the height of apartheid, and an invitation to recognize and refuse to repeat the cycles we’ve grown up in — from the bestselling author of Never Unfriended.

With a story that stretches from South Africa’s outback to Washington, D.C., It Wasn’t Roaring, It Was Weeping is a courageous look at inherited hurts and prejudices, and a hope-filled example for all who feel lost in life or worried that they’re too off course to make the necessary corrections. Lisa-Jo’s story shows that it’s never too late to be free.

Order your copy today . . . and leave a comment below for a chance to WIN a copy*!

Then join Becky Keife on the (in)courage podcast this weekend for a conversation with Lisa-Jo about this special new book. Don’t miss it!

*Giveaway open to US addresses only and closes on 7/15/24 at 11:59 pm central.

Listen to today’s devotion below or on your favorite podcast player!

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