We all have someone who we look up to, admire, strive to be like and who we can spend hours with. As you can guess from my last post, that is a short list for me (not counting kids or my husband). A list consisting of one person: My grandma, Florence. She's amazing. She's kind, compassionate, intelligent, wise, loving, faithful, God-fearing, dedicated, and she's the only person in my family and my whole life really, who has been there for me since the day I came into this world. She held me before my own father did. He felt a cigarette was more demanding at the time. She has always told me that when she held me she looked at me and said "Well, it's you and me kid" since there wasn't a whole lot to be said for my meth addicted mom who didn't want to have a child in the first place. She stuck around until I was 4 but her friends felt like I was interfering with her life and I suppose peer pressure can still be highly effective at 29 if you let it. So when my dad took over for my mom, my grandma (who is his mother) had me a lot. She is the reason I know how to love my own kids. Because my parents certainly didn't teach me that.
I ended up going into foster care at 6 and she took me for a year when I was 6/7 but to be honest, between the ADD and my general angry-at-the-world attitude (what foster kid isn't to some degree?) I was a bit of a handful for my grandfather (who is actually my step grandfather and doesn't really like young kids) and my great-grandma Louise. So she reluctantly put me back into the system but she never left me. She visited me often, no matter what part of San Diego county I bounced around to, took me for weekends and holidays and my birthday, wrote me letters and sent me gifts and called a few times a week. Then she moved to a rinky-dink island in the south Pacific due to my grandfathers job and letters and phone calls became all we had.That didn't stop her though. She wrote me letters and told me the ways of life living on an island 1 mile wide and 2 miles long. No cars. Just bikes. Then eventually, they moved back. Then they moved to Yuma. And back again. Through it all, she made sure I knew I wasn't alone.
My grandma is the reason I am a Christian. She has followed Christ and gone to church since before I was born. She started taking me when I was 3 and she had me on a weekend. Growing up, I wasn't really into "the God thing" and while I always believed in God, I had no desire to live a life full of rules, can-nots and judgement (in that I didn't want to be judged every time I did something "un-Christian). Funny thing is, it doesn't have to be that way and my grandma showed me that. The only "rule" she lives by is to follow Christ and the rest sorts itself out. She does what she wants, when she wants and she's quite stubborn. But with Christ as the center of her life, obviously she's not out getting smashed or writing bad checks. She attends church and home fellowship weekly. She makes BEAUTIFUL quilts for people for gifts. She reads the Bible every morning and all the way through each year. She serves on mission trips and used to do a lot of outreach. And she's certainly loved me unconditionally over the years, no matter what. I have done some stupid things in my life and she never stopped loving me, though I did get a few lectures. She has always loved me, for me. People just LOVE her. She makes friends everywhere she goes, she is quite the social butterfly at church and she's had some of the same friends for YEARS. Longer than my 29. Our family loves her. She's very close to all of us in her own way. She has a designated room at my cousin's house in Las Vegas. She has a special relationship with my cousin, her "shell". She adores my kids, her great grand kids. She is an amazing person and one day, I hope people love, respect and care for me the way they do for her.
We used to just sit around and talk. She would tell me about my childhood. Or her childhood. Or where she was when JFK was shot or how she used to curl her hair back in the 1960's. She taught me how to sew and the only quilt I've ever made was with her. She instilled in me good habits. Like drinking a lot of water, not turning on a car until all the seat belts are buckled, reading my Bible, the love of books. I LOVE to read. Which I credit her for. She started reading to me as an infant and my very first trip to a library was when I was 4 and she took me. She taught me how to make peanut butter and honey sandwiches, which I have passed on to all my kids and I still eat regularly. She taught me how to flip pancakes, that it's ok to cry over "Land Before Time" when you're 8 and that you're never too old for Winnie-the-Pooh. She taught me how to paint my nails, and do puzzles. And she taught me that it's ok to be upset with God when tragedy happens, because she had suffered through her own fair share.
Well, it wasn't a tragedy in that it was final but when my loving grandma had a debilitating stroke on her flight back from Scotland in September of 2012, it was tragic. Without going into all the details (because frankly, I don't want to relive them) my grandma suffered a stroke that had her in ICU for 3 weeks under heavy sedation to alleviate swelling in her brain, then in a rehab center and finally home but left her paralyzed on her right side, in a wheelchair, and unable to speak. As of this writing, she has regained the strength to stand and take a few steps with assistance and her speech improves daily, though 80% is still incoherent and she is still paralyzed on the right side. So it's a good thing she's left handed.
This tore me up. I was scared and angry. SO ANGRY with God, and the pilot who didn't land the plane right away (she had the stroke roughly 2 hours outside of San Diego but there were other air ports), whoever it was on the ground that decided this wasn't a big enough emergency to warrant an emergency landing, her doctor who allowed her to go off her blood thinners (as a result of a previous mild stroke a year earlier), and basically anyone who I could be angry at. For a moment, I was even angry with her for requesting to be taken off the blood thinners (she didn't like that she bruised so easily). But that only lasted a second.
So I turned on God. I ranted and raved. I was mad and angry. And I had never had much of a prayer life before this and now I had one, an angry one. There wasn't a lot of thanks in those prayers. I didn't feel like I had much to thank him for. I was wrong obviously, but didn't see it at the time and was struggling to see outside the little box of anger I was drowning in. It took me a while but I came around and turned to the one person that my grandma had taught me to turn to in times of need: Jesus.
Today, I am a Christian and I live my live to please God. I am happier than I've ever been. My grandma has raised me to love Jesus and for years I rebelled against that. I felt like by living a "goody two shoes" life, I would miss out on something. Nope. So after her stroke, I did the typical thing and prayed the standard "If you save my grandma, I promise to go to church and read my bible more" prayer. I bargained, even though I knew that was NOT the way The Lord worked. BUT He did save my grandma! She is not quite the same, but she is still here. She knows who we are, she gives us hugs and kisses and still understands everything we say. And as her speech gradually comes back, she tells us she loves us.
My grandma passed on the greatest gift to me and that is the love of Jesus. I have a happier life and marriage because when The Lord saved my grandma, I kept my word. I started going to church regularly and reading the Bible. In the beginning it felt like a chore with a side of bio homework. But soon, I began to look forward to Sundays and I started reading beyond my schedule reading plan each day. And I enjoyed reading the Bible to my grandma when she was in the hospital and rehab.
The greatest gift my grandma gave me was unconditional love. She loved me the way Jesus loves us. The second greatest gift she gave me was the knowledge of Christ from a young age. And in 2 days, I get to see her!
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
-Proverbs 22:6
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