The Legacy — By the Rev. Ted Schroeder

When it comes to family history, fiction can be just as precious as fact.

By The Rev. Ted Schroeder

I must have been about 8 when Grandpa took me unicorn hunting for the first time. "They're very hard to see," he told me. "In fact, few people ever glimpse one at all. But you can hear them rustling over the ridge, and catch a flash of their form along the creek ahead. Hunting unicorns is a marvelous thing, boy. It's following a path marked by the finger of God."

On our hunts, we often made our way through the mysterious woods that ran along the creek behind his house. We walked along in what I thought to be Indian-like silence, hardly speaking for long stretches of time. Grandpa would stop and caress the trunk of an ancient tree. We'd lurk in the shadows and help a doe herd her fawn away from the edge of the clearing. We'd trace the shape of the raccoon's paw on the mud bank of the creek, and savor the smell of the pine needles warming in the sun. Each unicorn hunt was an adventure in listening, watching and waiting.

Most of the people in town smiled when they mentioned Grandpa. They would tap the side of their heads and share knowing glances as he passed. "That's the one," they would say. "He's the one who threw it all away."

Grandpa, it seemed, had been a great success. By his mid-30s, Grandpa wore a suit to work and didn't have to drive his own tractors anymore.

And then something happened. Maybe it was when Grandma died in her 40th year, but all of a sudden Grandpa sold it all—the farm and all he'd accumulated. He used some of the money to buy a section of woods that ran along the creek. There he built his own cabin-like house on the edge of the ravine, a mile or so from the nearest road. "I want to be able to see the unicorns," he would explain.

Once, when I was older, I visited Grandpa again. I asked him about the unicorns. "Grandpa, you rascal, you know that unicorns are mythical animals, don't you?" I inquired with a gentle smile. "You know, some people think you're a little touched in the head to be living out here looking for something that isn't real."

Grandpa returned my smile with one of his own. "Who's to say what's real? Is it more real to bang through the world hunting for trophies to hang on your wall? Or more real to follow the track of the unicorn and savor the wondrous path it marks? Is that path an illusion if it makes the whole world a song of praise to the one who created even unicorns, and set their path into the heart of those who can follow?"

Often now, when I walk with my grandson in the woods, I think of Grandpa. He seems to be with us as we watch and wonder together at God's marvelous world. And it still happens—when it begins to get dark after a whole day of watching, waiting and searching, just as the wind dies and the stillness of night falls on the meadow. Then I kneel next to my grandson, just like Grandpa did with me, and point through the dimming light. And there, just at the edge of eyesight, is the unicorn, standing proud as only unicorns can, pointing with that long, lone horn into the future.

The Rev. Ted Schroeder, a regular contributor to Thrivent magazine, is a Thrivent Financial member. He and his wife live in Minneapolis.

"I will declare your name to my brothers; in the congregation I will praise you." (Psalm 22:22 NIV).