"Tapia", to be or not to be?

I use to take pride in my last name.  I use to walk around with it across my chest, full of pride that I was another Tapia.  Another Tapia?  I took such pride in my last name that I couldn't wait to give it to another person the day I got married.  I took such pride in my last name that I couldn't wait to give it to the next generation the day I would have kids.

What defines a Tapia?  When people hear my last name, what impression do I make?  If they're familiar with the name than they more than likely know a lot of my uncles or older cousins whom were the generation before mine that was "just another Tapia generation".  Another Tapia generation that followed many other generations into a life of sin and the stronghold of alchohol.  My generation is heading that direction.  My generation is going to be just another link in the chain that is a generational curse in my family.  

Now, why would anyone want to represent that?  Why did I take such pride in something going the same path every generation before it went?  The same path everyone on the outside looking in expects it to go?  Why would I take pride in being a member of a family that is cursed?  Why would I want to be "just another typical Tapia"?

We all know that Christ was Jesus' last name.  If I'm correct Christ meant "the anointed one".  But what if it was his last name?  Now that would be a last name to take pride in.  Like that movie The Da Vinci Code, how B-A would that be to be a decendent of Jesus Christ?  Even if you didn't have supernatural powers, just to be able to say that you are in God in the flesh's family tree would be pretty freakin' cool.  I use to take pride in knowing that the Tapia family was once latin royalty from Spain way back in the day, but that doesn't even compare to if someone could say that "big guns upstairs" is your great, great, great, great, and so on grandpa.  But then again, aren't we all God's children?  This where I now find my pride.

I am God's child and my pride is no longer in my last name.  I have done some things in my life that I am not proud of, things that onlookers probably think to themselves that I am "just another Tapia".  I will not let this be.  I will not accept this label.  I now find myself ashamed to be a Tapia because that name represents everything I am not and don't want to be.  I hate that I had to give my wife that name and I fear what kind of plot the devil is planning for my children whom will carry the Tapia name.

It ends with me.  I will be different.  I won't walk around feeling cursed or condemned that I carry that last name with me like a label on my forehead, but will keep my eyes on God and make the Tapia name new!  I will be the first! This is the generation that will not only break that curse, but will represent Tapia like the name Christ did Jesus.  I don't know that I can save my entire generation or the ones before mine, but like scripture says "as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord".  My wife and I will keep our focus on God and put Him first.  We will bring our children into this world taking pride that God knew them and had a plan for their lives even before they were in the womb.  We will plant a seed in our children that will carry on from generation to generation.  We will be the start of the new Tapia name.  We will be a family of faith and wash the Tapia name clean of all it's worldly strongholds and stereotypes.  People will no longer look at me as "just another", but "the Tapia" that went the other direction.  The one that broke the curse.  I am fed up with the bondage the devil has had on my me and my family and will not go the same direction as those before me.  The Tapia name will become an anointed family and it starts here!