Pink and White, and So Much More

A couple of months ago, I realized I didn't have a picture of all four of my grandchildren together, so I sat them down on my stairs, pulled out my cell phone, and took some pictures. Then, I took the best photo and used it as the lock screen picture on my phone. That way, every time I turn on my phone, I see their smiling faces looking at me for a few seconds before I put in the code and get on with my business.

Tobin, Evelyn, holding Arden, and Lydia

After looking at the photo every day for the last two months, I've realized something: my grandchildren are the very picture of "pink and white." Oh, they all have beautiful, big blue eyes, too, and blond hair of various lengths and textures. Anyone who sees them all together can tell that they are siblings, that's for sure, and no one doubts their predominantly German heritage.

My brother, sister, and I all share wide shoulders, but little else, as far as physical features are concerned. Dan and I both have green eyes, and Laura and I were both blessed with dark, brown hair, but when we were growing up, no one ever picked us out of a crowd as siblings.

Janet, Dan, Laura

My biological daughters, Erin and Meagan, both have blond hair, in spite of the fact that Bill was a natural redhead, and I was a brunette. Their physical features and personalities are enough different that they have rarely been pegged as sisters by people who don't know them.

Bill, Janet, Erin, Meagan, around 1997

I love to study genetics! It is amazing how God orchestrates our genes and chromosomes to create so many unique individuals. Our looks are just a small part of each of us, though. God has given everyone such unique abilities and personalities.

My four grandchildren look alike, it's true, but they each have distinct interests, strengths, and temperaments, just as their parents and grandparents do. 

I remember, several years ago, when a friend suggested that blonde hair and light colored skin will eventually become extinct, since dark hair and skin are dominant traits. There may be some truth to that, especially in a melting pot country like ours.

When I was a little girl, "mixing the races" was universally condemned. Purity of nationalities and races was the norm, but it wasn't really right. After all, skin and hair color are only visible on the outside. They have nothing at all to do with personality, moral values, strengths, or weaknesses, and everything to do with proximity to the equator.

I like this graphic, which shows skin color in relation to location. Skin color boils down to just one thing: how much each indiginous people group needs to be protected from the effects of the sun. The people with the darkest features originally lived closest to the equator, where the effects of the sun are most evident, and those with the lightest physical features lived the farthest from the equator, in climates where the sun doesn't shine at all for much of the winter.

God thought of everything, didn't he?

In recent decades, people of various ethnic backgrounds have scattered throughout the world. Interracial marriage has become more accepted everywhere, but it remains to be seen whether my friend will be right. 

Personally, I will say that I love my grandchildren dearly, but I am looking forward to a future grandchild, or maybe even a great-grandchild someday, with brown hair like mine, or red hair like Bill's, simply because I love variety.

I think that our creative God loves variety, too. Otherwise, why do you suppose he made people with so much diversity, inside and out?

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. Psalm 139:13-16