Miracles: They come in small, squirming, grunting and wide-eyed packages

My last installment from the Beltway trip is the best.

Gettysburg, D.C., Fort McHenry, etc., were all on my "bucket list," to be sure.

The best part of the trip, though, was one I had frankly given up on ever happening: holding a grandchild who would carry on our crazy, good, bad and indifferent gene pool to another generation.

I have two other grandchildren I love deeply. Joshua and Lela. I like to say they were "born in my heart," though not my bloodline.

And I mean that with all my heart.

Holding Gabriel was precious, though, in a way I had not expected to experience.

I marveled at all those ancestors -- now including my wife, Barbara, and myself -- who culminated genetically in that tiny, grunting, squirming bundle of boy I rocked in a Towson, Md. townhouse for two weeks.

Add that to the generations of his father, Idal, represented. . . men and women stretching back into the mists of West Africa's nation of Cameroon.

Gabriel's heritage, then, spans three continents and most people groups, other than Asian. Amazing. A lot to put on a (then) 7 pound, 5 ounce infant, though.

And if there is such a thing as generational healing, perhaps it culminates in Gabriel's advent, too. A couple centuries ago, some of my relatives bought West African slaves and used them to gain wealth on plantations throughout the Deep South.

When I visited Gettysburg, standing on Little Round Top, I mused that I trod ground where my southern ancestors fought and died, ultimately losing a decisive battle that ushered in the demise of slavery in America. 

And at the end of that Civil War, a Maj. Mims was a signatory of the Appomatox surrender registry for the defeated Army of Northern Virginia.

Standing in the rows of Union troops witnessing that surrender likely were other relatives, the Sprouls from Maine, and not a few runaway slaves who enlisted in the U.S. Colored Troops divisions, men who signed up under the name "Mims," having long since lost their own names.

Irony. And justice. All those historical metaphors.

But the best part of Gabriel was inexpressible.

How do you describe the warmth, peace and fulfillment of holding a newborn grandson?

God bless you Gabe, Lela and Joshua.

May the heritage this grandfather passes on to you be one of faith -- in God, your family and yourselves.

And Gabriel? Never forget your parents named you so for a reason. Your name? 

It means: God is my strength.