The Story You Are Telling About Your Famil

July 13th, 2026
by Howard Harris Jr.

Summer at the Movies | Monday Reflection | Week 6

"For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more." — Jeremiah 31:34

Sunday you heard about a family that banned music for generations because of a wound nobody fully understood anymore. The rule outlasted the reason. The protection became the prison. And a boy had to go all the way into the land of the dead to find out what his family had been protecting itself from all along.

Most of us have inherited a story about our family that we have never examined. Not the facts. The interpretation. The unspoken rules about what is safe to talk about and what gets avoided. The patterns that repeat in ways nobody planned and nobody is willing to name. The wound that became a tradition.

Here is the honest question Sunday was really asking. What story are you telling about your family that is keeping the next generation in a smaller room than they were made for?

Not the story of what happened. The story of what it means. Because the meaning you attach to what happened is what gets passed down. The bitterness or the forgiveness. The silence or the conversation. The wall or the open door.

Jeremiah says God forgives and remembers no more. That is not just a promise about your sin. It is a model for how you handle someone else's. The wound does not have to define the next chapter. But someone has to be willing to tell a different story about it.

This week, ask yourself what you are passing down. Not what happened to you. What you have decided it means. Because that is what your children are inheriting.