Lessons from Grandma

Several of my posts have been about death and dying, which to many might seem morbid and depressing. But for me, it is just a part of life and it is important to find good in even the most difficult times of life. Once again, I have the opportunity to ponder the goodness of God as I mourn the death of my Grandma at age 94, on December 16th.

Here’s a memory that I wrote to share at her memorial service that took place on January 16, 2011. Seems like just yesterday . . .

It is difficult to communicate in a succinct way all that I remember about Grandma – what made her so special and how much she did for me. I remember how she corrected my grammar, beat me soundly at Scrabble, and lovingly made ebelskivers for breakfast as a special treat. I have a clear picture of her knitting and crocheting beautiful afghans while cheering on the Dodgers or watching the evening news. She was the poster child for an independent, stubborn, and hardworking woman.

But in the end, it isn’t the funny or touching things she did or said that I remember, it is the way that knowing her has transformed my life. I didn’t necessarily know her through her own words or stories, it was her life that spoke volumes to me. I am the better for observing how she lived.

Through her influence I realized that it is okay to wonder, but don’t wallow. Grandma had a difficult childhood and could have wallowed in the unfairness of her life. I know that she sometimes wondered what life would have been like if she had grown up under the care of her loving mother, who died when Grandma was less than two. But in the midst of wondering she communicated that God was in control and had used her past to help her minister to others.

She taught me that it is not about what you get out of life, it is about what you give. Grandma modeled a simplicity of life and contentment that is unheard of in our overly materialistic society. She held possessions and resources very lightly. I think of that every time I covet new furniture, or want to remodel my perfectly lovely home, or hold on to possessions that I rarely use. Grandma wasn’t drawn to bigger and better or more; she would rather live simply so she could share generously with others. I know many of her children, grandchildren, and friends have been beneficiaries of her generosity. She couldn’t have been so generous without making the choice to live simply.

I also learned that hospitality and friendship are the two most valuable things you can give to others. Grandma hosted so many in her home – internationals, family, friends of her children – everyone was welcome. She gave of her time and offered her friendship to developmentally or physically disabled, shut-ins, and those who were new to the US. She truly loved and cared for all who passed through her life.

Last, but not least, Grandma taught me that I should be bold about sharing my faith. Grandma was not afraid to share her faith, even at the risk of offending someone. I know that God kept her on earth for all these years because there was just one more person who needed to know Jesus as their Savior. I am grateful for all that Grandma modeled for me, but in the end, this is the greatest thing I have learned from her.

All I Once Held Dear . . .

Yesterday, I finally had some time to sit down and write a bit. But then I didn't have time to post it. Rather than try to edit this to be more appropriate for today, I think it is best to just post what I wrote yesterday, Saturday morning, March 20th.

Today is the first day of Spring. Even though it is a bit chilly this morning, the sun is shining and the weathercasters are promising temperatures in the mid- to high 60’s. I look outside and see the flowers blooming and trees budding, and birds flitting among the branches. All of nature is coming back to life at once it seems; all of God’s creation except me. It has been a long time since I have met the wonder of any new season with such a lack of anticipation and overwhelming sadness.

Losing my husband progressively to AIDS over the last 5 ½ years of our marriage and becoming a widow at age 33, was at time such as this. At times I thought I would never make it through and joy would never come. But just in time God would bring me a moment where I clearly saw His good for me, could feel my heartbreak heal and hope for the future break through. It was like Spring coming after a long Winter of sadness, grief, anger, and loneliness.

In the last 15 years there have been other hard times in my life, but nothing like the events of the last six weeks. At a time when life should be bursting forth, for me the joy of life has died.

No need to go into all the details, except to say that my father died of lung cancer when we hoped he was going to be one of the success stories. Just as we thought he would be done with treatment and jump back into the life he loved, he was hospitalized with radiation pneumonitis and died within a week, on February 13th. The next day, when we should have been celebrating the love exhibited in my parents' marriage of nearly 50 years, we drew together as a family to begin mourning the loss of Dad’s presence. Over the next week, we were surrounded by loving family and friends, celebrating the life we had shared with him, and being comforted by the knowledge that Dad was with his Lord in heaven.

A couple of weeks after the memorial services, we began to settle into our new way of being family. We all found our niche to help my mom with the everyday responsibilities of life – bills, probate, house maintenance, social events and planning for the future – things that all brought back some sense of rhythm and purpose to our lives. Sure there were still sad moments, but we were functioning together as a family, working together to grieve and progress toward normalness.

Just as things were starting to calm down, another tragedy struck on St. Patrick’s Day. My parent’s adorable dog, Sadie - which my mom bought for Dad to help him in his recovery and was now helping her in her own grief – was struck by a car and killed. The most painful part was that it happened while the dog was in the care of my sister, as my mother was 80 miles away with me, meeting with an attorney to take care of estate business.

I cannot put words to the intense pain and sadness that has erupted and remained since the death of that little dog just three days ago. All of us are devastated – why did this have to happen at this time and in this particular way? The pain seems even greater than the pain I felt when my father died – it doesn’t make sense and seems so pointless. I think we all have begun to question the sovereignty God, perhaps even His goodness.

I am so grateful for Scripture and music at these times in my life. How do people function and find meaning without those resources? Rereading the story of Job, and verses from Lamentation 3, Isaiah 43 and 54, reminded me that when I feel that life is overwhelming, God is there. I am sure that none of the authors who penned these passages truly understood in their human minds or hearts what God was working in their lives as they were going through such awful times. But they all gained the understanding, through the work of the Holy Spirit, to believe that God would be true to his character – loving, compassionate, faithful, merciful, all-knowing, all-powerful, righteous and just – throughout their sufferings.

Then this morning, I was listening to worship songs on my I-Pod, when I was struck by the truth of Philippians 3:7, so beautifully expressed in a song by Graham Kendrick called Knowing You.

V1
All I once held dear, built my life upon,
all this world reveres and wars to own.
All I once thought gain I have counted loss,
spent and worthless now compared to this.

CHORUS
Knowing You, Jesus, knowing You,
There is no greater thing.
You’re my all, You’re the best,
You’re my joy, my righteousness,
And I love you Lord.

V2
Now my heart’s desire is to know You more,
to be found in You, and known as Yours.
To possess by faith what I could not earn,
all surpassing gift of righteousness.

V3
Oh to know the pow’r of Your risen life
and to know You in Your sufferings,
To become like You in Your death, my Lord,
So with You to live and never die.

All of this leads me to ask whether I really believe that knowing God and believing in the saving work of his son Jesus is the greatest and the best. Where does my joy really come from? Is experiencing pain just a part of experiencing true joy? Will I eventually see the events of the last six weeks as a means to greater joy and faith and righteousness?


Knowing my dad and being loved by him brought great joy to my life. Having little Sadie for the last 8-9 months brought joy to all of us, too. But no matter how much love and joy they brought, it is only temporary. How much greater joy should it be to know the God of the Universe who loves me unconditionally and who works so mightily in my life? He alone has been and will be with me all of my life, as I go through the suffering that is shaping me. It is hard to learn through experience and even more difficult to believe, but this is all part of the process of becoming Christ-like.

Take the Time to Look

It's been 5 months since I put up my first post, and I haven't even put up Part II of "The Why's and What's" posting. See what I mean about life taking over and distracting me from my writing? Well, here I am back again because an amazing moment that happened yesterday morning. Well at least it was for me ;-)

I was heading out the door, dreading the walk to work in the rain and wind, and wishing I could just stay home. As I headed down the walk-way between the buildings, focused on holding on to my umbrella while getting my iPhone to play music, something caught my eye and I looked up at the sky in the opposite direction of where I was heading. There against the blue sky, the beginnings of a rainbow was forming. As I stopped to look further, before my eyes the full arc of a vivid rainbow streched across the skyline of the hill behind my condo complex. It lasted for only 2-3 minutes and then it was gone.

Had I not taken the moment to look up, I would have trudged through the parking lot, focused solely on getting to the bus - and I would have missed it all. It was a reminder to me of God's faithfulness to me. Amidst the rain and wind of life, He is there. He is ready and waiting to reveal Himself, if we will only take the time to see Him. It also made me ask myself "How often do I look the wrong direction and miss God?" Sometimes I have to look back to see Him when I can't see him in the direction I am heading.

Of course, then the words of my favorite song came to mind . . . Great is Thy Faithfulness . . . especially the last verse.

V1
Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father;
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not;
As Thou hast been, Thou forever will be.

Refrain
Great is Thy faithfulness! Great is Thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see.
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided;
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!

V2
Summer and winter and springtime and harvest,
Sun, moon and stars in their courses above
Join with all nature in manifold witness
To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.

Refrain

V3Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth
Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide;
Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow,
Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!

Refrain

That's my lesson for this week . . . sometimes you just need to take the time to look up or even backward to be reminded that God is SO good!

Why's and What's - Part 1

So in my initial post I mentioned that there are some why's and what's that would be sharing. Here is an excerpt from my musings from Sunday, June 14th.

It began growing in my mind again a few minutes ago – the thought that I needed to write down all the things that were going on in my head –all the stories that have been my life, all the experiences that have shaped me, the life lessons that I use in my everyday and especially the feelings that accompanied me through it all.

It began simply enough, this desire to sit down at a computer and write until the thoughts are all exposed in black and white. Today is a gray Sunday in the middle of June 2009, a welcome relief after a string of 75+ degree days. I love Sundays, not just because of worship in the morning, but because for the last few years I have made it a point to make Sundays my day to be refreshed – I truly try to experience Sabbath rest. Typically Sundays are my day to say no to everyone and everything, except church and my weekly responsibilities there. As soon as church is over, I head home to eat alone and do whatever it is that makes me feel refreshed inside and out. Sometimes I bury myself in a good book or put in a movie to escape into someone else’s story. Sometimes I take a nap for 2-3 hours to recover from one of my exhausting weeks. But the most refreshing part of Sundays is when I put on a worship CD, sit down with my Bible, word study dictionaries, my colored pencils and a pot of tea. As the worship music fills my ears, I study for 4-5 hours and write note after note in the margins of my Bible. It never fails that I learn something new about God’s character and the way He works in my life. The time passes so quickly that I wonder why it can’t be like that every day. I feel refreshed and ready to begin another week.

Anyway, I need to get back to how I got to be at my computer attempting to write down my thoughts.

One this particular Sunday, I am sitting in my reading chair with my cat Jill on my lap purring, while I am shaking off the effects of a 30 minute cat-nap (no pun intended). I woke up processing in my mind the book that I had finished prior to my nap – A Walk with Jane Austen: A Journey into Adventure, Love & Faith – by Lori Smith. I am in awe of (okay, envying) the fact that she has actually found the time and energy to write down her thoughts and feelings about her time traveling in the footsteps of Jane Austen; in awe because for years I have been meaning to do the same thing. Well not exactly the same thing, but nearly the same thing. My pipe dream has been to take a year off of everyday life, find a place that is peaceful yet entirely out of my comfort zone – like a small village in Italy or Ireland – where I would meet new people, experience a different culture, smell the roses, and write whatever comes into my head. But always the reality that I have a mortgage and am less than 20 years away from retirement, with little means of support, brings me back to my senses before I act on my dream.

Back to the book . . . There were so many points in Lori Smith’s book that resonated with my own life experience – too many to recount here without feeling like I am writing a book report. I kept thinking, “How did she do that?” How did she let herself write this book that wanders from topic to topic, from recounting the history of Jane Austen’s life, to actual events that were happening at the moment (some of them quite embarrassing), to mulling over events in the past and what she thought or felt about her life? While I loved the book, it all seemed so crazy quilt-like - all these random thoughts and experiences, never coming to a climax or conclusion, just meandering to and fro, finally ending before I felt like it should without the “happy ever after.”

As I mulled over the stories and I kept thinking, “Kelley you should do quit saying that you want to write your story and you should just do it. Don’t worry about taking a year off or finding a quiet peaceful village in a foreign country. Just get out your computer, curl back up in this chair, and do it.” But in the midst of my resolve to do so, the reality of how impossible that will be hits me full force. I am reminded of the many times I have tried to keep a regular journal, only to peter out after two to three days. Or the one time that I actually took a week off work to begin my memoir and couldn’t focus for more than two hours because of the construction going outside my condo. I have constantly failed in these efforts because: 1) I don’t have the discipline to keep up a daily routine of writing, exercise, devotions, or anything else for that matter, 2) I am a perfectionist and rip up page after page because I can’t say it right, and 3) my daily existence (which I often describe as boring) just seems to be sucking up all my time.

I wish that someone would invent a machine that transcribes your thoughts as you think them. Then it would be so easy to communicate what is going on in this brain of mine. Then when the amazing “ah ha” moments come – while I am in my car or the bus, when I am recounting a story to a friend, or when I awake in the middle of the night and am too tired to get to my computer or grab a pen – the thoughts would be recorded. And the machine wouldn’t be bound by the delete button, or spell-check, or any other barrier that keeps me from getting my thoughts on paper. The barriers are many – I alluded to some of them above, but there are more.

What I did on a whim . . .

Thanks to my dear colleague, Janine Dixon (cute blonde on the right, I (short brunette on the left) am now out there in the blogosphere.

To be honest, I am doing this on a whim. I don't know if I have the discipline to keep up a regular blog. But I will try - because it is an excercise in overcoming my fear of writing for others to read.

I don't have time right now to completely detail the "why's" and "what's" of this blog. That is for another day . . . gives you something to look forward to.