It was an afternoon visit just a few months before my father died. My mother and I had made the hour and half drive upstate to where he was living–or at this point, dying from AIDS–with his gay partner, John. Even though my parents were divorced, they still maintained a relationship, dysfunctional as it was. So we came to spend some time with him, knowing time was getting short.

At one point during the visit, I was standing in the kitchen with John, with my parents in the adjacent room having their own conversation, which quickly became heated. John and I listened as they argued with each other about which of them were taking more medications for mental illness and who had tried to commit suicide more than the other. It was some sort of twisted competition to “win” who was more of a mess mentally and emotionally and was a painful reminder of all that my childhood encompassed.

Hearing all this, John looked over to me and commented with an ironic chuckle, “I guess that is the legacy you get passed down.” The apparent truth of his words cut deeply in my heart, and I responded with a heavy sigh, “I guess so.” It was in that moment that God spoke to me more clearly than He every had before or since. As soon as those words came out of my mouth, I heard a powerful, “No it is not!” deep inside my heart. The Lord went on, “That is not your legacy. You are My child, and you have my legacy.”

The words He spoke are the real truth that has completely changed my life then, now and forever, thanks be to God.

This is what I shared with Christian music artist, Matthew West, when he asked listeners to send stories of God’s work in their lives for his “Story of Your Life” album in 2010. When I emailed my story to him, it was one of 10,000 that he received. I never imagined that I would hear anything back, but little did I know that Matthew was praying to find a story that gave testimony of the new legacy we have in Christ, and then he read mine. So out of those 10,000 stories, my story was chosen by Matthew to write a song for his album. The song is “Family Tree.”