The Faith I Inherited

These quiet days of Advent have me thinking about the women who came before me.

And thus I’m sitting with two candles burning,

and with a photograph that holds more than faces.

It holds the story of the faith that carried me here.

In the centre of this photograph stands my dear great-nan, Mary Frances.

She is surrounded by her daughters

and her daughter-in-law.

But what I see most clearly when I look at her

is not her coat, or her posture, or even her smile.

I see her faith.

She was the holder.

The steady one.

The woman who carried prayer when times were hard, and who kept the lamp lit when the world grew dark.

I didn’t know her too long in this life and yet I feel her with me each and every day.

I believe she walks beside me still, teaching me quietly how to be the new holder of faith for this family.

And on the very far left of this photograph is her daughter my grandmother.

Each time I look at this image, I feel her presence too.

It’s not loud.

It’s not dramatic.

It’s like Doris has a gentle hand at my back, a reminder that I’m not walking alone.

This is what Advent has been teaching me:

That faith doesn’t always arrive as certainty, sometimes it arrives as inheritance.

Passed from woman to woman.

Through whispered prayers.

Through tired hands that kept going anyway.

Through kitchens, sickbeds, empty rooms,

and moments where hope felt very small.

And somehow here it is now, resting in my own hands.

Closing Prayer :

Tonight, as these candles burn,

I give thanks for the women who carried the flame before me.

For Mary Frances.

For my grandmother.

For all the quiet faith-holders whose names the world may never know —

but heaven surely does.

May I carry what they entrusted to me with gentleness.

May I pass it on with love.

And may the light never go out in our family line.

Amen.

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