The Reason for the Name

It's Thanksgiving week (I like how a one-day holiday has turned into a week-long reason to get off of work and school celebration) and I was reflecting on the name of my blog and my affinity for pilgrims.

A little known fact about me that I am very proud of is that I am a Mayflower descendant (and I have papers to prove it!) Most of the time I wear sweats and let my kids eat candy they find on the floor of the grocery store, but I have papers to prove that my ancestors came on the Mayflower, so every Thanksgiving, I stand up a little taller because I am pedigreed...or something.

The papers say that I am a direct descendant on my mom's side to John Alden and Priscilla (Mullen) Alden (I think they are in the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Movie so that adds to the celebrity-factor of my lineage, I think). If I remember what my mom taught me, my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great Grandmother was the first white baby born in New England (Elizabeth Alden). She lived until she was 94! It looks like John was 21 when he came and Priscilla was only 18...I wonder if they got married on the ship? So, you see, when people ask me what my ethnicity is, I emphatically answer American (though not if I am talking to a Native American because then it could get a little dicey).

Okay, it's not really that big of a deal to have Mayflower papers and to be a descendant of a pilgrim, but I think it's fun to wonder about how my life has been shaped by my heritage and to feel connected to a bigger story than just my own life. I like to imagine (and it is very likely) that they left to escape religious persecution in England, though all that is recorded was that John Alden was a barrel-maker. It's interesting that all I "want" in life is to put down roots and stay forever in one place, but I married a man who would have been one of the first to sign up for passage on that ship so long ago. Maybe he was like John, and maybe Priscilla only went because her father said their family was going...maybe she cried like I would as she watched her beloved homeland become a speck in the distance. But I bet she found strength she didn't know she had and put her heart into making a new home in the New World. That's how I felt when Jeremy and I went to Kazakhstan...and Jeremy often reminds me that even though I was reluctant at first to go, it was the hardest for me to leave.

So I guess I like this idea of being a pilgrim...to be a sojourner in a world that is not my home but to be looking ahead to where I really belong. We are studying the book of Genesis in the Bible with our youth group and God takes so many of his people out of their homeland and somewhere new because he wants to do something through them and show his greatness and his plan--Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, even Mary and Joseph and many of the disciples. It kept them looking to God for their security and provision instead of themselves, and helped them see that God transcends their culture and customs and is bigger than they ever thought.

The thing that really inspired me to name this blog "These Pilgrim Days" were the words to one of my favorite songs that is an old hymn redone by Indellible Grace (I'll put it here in writing that I want it sung at my funeral, whenever that is)...here's the last verse:

Haste thee on from grace to glory, Armed by faith, and winged by prayer. Heaven’s eternal days before thee, God’s own hand shall guide us there. Soon shall close thy earthly mission, Soon shall pass thy pilgrim days, Hope shall change to glad fruition, Faith to sight, and prayer to praise.

Happy Thanksgiving and thank you, God, for so many blessings in my life!