The Trunk

When the young German immigrant widow boarded the train that day in Wisconsin to make the long trip to Texas, with only her trunk and two young daughters 8 and 11, she had no idea that the grandmother of her great, great grandchildren would be posting a story about her on a blog 100 years later.

When the young German immigrant widow boarded the train that day in Wisconsin to make the long trip to Texas, with only her trunk and two young daughters 8 and 11, she had no idea that the grandmother of her great, great grandchildren would be posting a story about her on a blog 100 years later.

“Nothing will help us act confidently and effectively in the world more than understanding that we are characters in a story that we share with other characters in interwoven stories,” writes Daniel Taylor in Tell Me a Story, The Life Shaping Power of Our Stories.  Some of these stories have the power to give great courage.

The story of my husband’s maternal grandmother, Martha Lange Barre, her story an integral part of our story, is of the courage -giving ilk. Her husband Hermann Barre, a contemporary of Bonhoeffer, was a German Lutheran pastor, who came to America to pastor a small German community in a rural farming area in Wisconsin. He died quite unexpectedly of a cerebral hemorrhage in his sleep leaving his wife and two young daughters alone in a country that was not their own.

Suspected to have a serious lung illness she was advised to come to Texas to a warmer climate to enter a sanatorium. Her health status was cleared, but she knew no one except those in the Lutheran church in San Antonio who cared for her and her daughters as they settled on their own. Working as a seamstress in the transit tower in San Antonio she raised her daughters both of whom married young men of German descent also living there.

I never got to meet Martha Lange Barre, but I feel an affinity with her to this day. Her courage to brave the unknown and accept what her story was, her perseverance to survive, her never wavering love of God and her desire to serve Him faithfully by raising her daughters to love God in spite of all odds is an inspiration to me.Oh how I wish I could talk to her. I have so many questions. How was it for her? What was she thinking and experiencing in her grief on that long train ride to Texas? How did she start over and raise her daughters in this new place?

Her trunk, now in our living room, is a visual reminder to me of her life and her courage. At one time it contained all her worldly possessions.

In spite of all the hardships she experienced in an immigrant pastor’s family, she still encouraged her teenage grandson, my husband – “Be a pastor.” She did not live to see that reality, but will know, if not already, that her vision and her prayers were realized. I’m motivated- what kind of courage-giving legacy will my story leave ? What of yours?