Why Is It So Important?

I can remember in high school listening to my history teacher talk about how history was important because if you don’t learn from your past you are doomed to repeat it. I have often thought of those words and thought how would that apply to family history? I don’t know that it really does, but I have often thought that if we do not learn from whom we came from how do we know who we will be in the future?

Then today I was scrolling on Facebook and saw this, “It is important that we learn humility, which says there was someone else before me who paid for me. My responsibility is to prepare myself so that I can pay for someone else who is yet to come.” - Maya Angelou I think these words are so powerful and very relevant to family history.

Through doing family history we learn who came before us, or in Maya’s words “who paid for me” and I promise you that once you learn about your family members who came before you it will humble you. Learning of their trials and struggles, their pains, their joys, and the triumphs, you will be prepared to for your children and grandchildren or in Maya’s words, “pay for someone else who is yet to come.”

This quote is why I am titling my family history blog, “IT IS IMPORTANT.” I promise you that you are as important to your Heavenly Father as your future family members are just as your past family members were, so why wouldn't Heavenly Father want you to learn about your ancestors? He wants you to know from whom you came from so that you know who you can be in the future.

From learning about my Grandfather, Holiday Waters Nye and my Grandmother, Susan Louise Ritter Nye I know that I am strong, resilient, kind, thoughtful, tough, stubborn, open hearted and many other things. It was and is so important to me to know that I am all those things because they were who they were.

I want to thank those family members, and there are too many to name, who have helped me to gather my family history. Without you I wouldn't have half of what I have now. I will to the best of my recollections give credit for information where credit is due, but if I forget please forgive me.

To those who I hope will read this blog, I hope that through what you read you will see how family history is important, it is worth your time and worth the energy; happy reading. J

Dianna