Series: Blessed Be
*Philippians 4:19 ESV
Proverbs 3:5-6 ESV
Isaiah 43:19 ESV
When I was young I sometimes went on a Sunday trip with my grandparents to see my Grandfather’s Mother.
My Great-Grandmother was kind and she was a very quiet sort of woman.
What I noticed about her most is that she had a way of stopping and looking away as if she was remembering something.
At the time I didn’t know what that meant but as I grew older and I learned more about the story of her life I had an ‘inkling’ about what ‘the look’ meant.
Even when I was young I knew she was a woman of faith. I knew that because my grandparents and my dad told me she had relied on Jesus in her life.
My dad told me her story and it was a story of faith.
Philippians 4:19 reminds me of her story, “And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”
The best part of her story began a few years after 1903. That’s the year my grandfather was born in Missouri. Some time after he was born and before my grandfather was a teenager his parents decided to make the trip from the Midwest to homestead in Montana.
By covered wagon this Irish couple made the trip with their only son. They did homestead there and set up house, but then my great-grandfather became ill.
He died in Montana.
Conditions in Montana were harsh and at some point my great-grandmother and my grandfather returned to Missouri. My great-grandmother set up ‘shop’ in a town in Northwest Missouri. I was told the shop was a millinery shop and she primarily sold hats.
The thing I remember about her is found in her far-away pensive look. I know enough about her story to understand that God was with her as she left Missouri and traveled to a new land.
She lived in Montana with her husband and her only son.
When her husband became ill and died, she trusted Jesus to care for them. She knew God was her constant companion and guide.
Then with her son (older son by now) she traveled back to Missouri where she relied on God to show her where to live and how to support both of them. She became a shop owner.
It was there that she met a fellow who had lost his wife. He had a daughter who didn’t have a mother. He was a judge in that county.
God provided a way for both my great-grandmother and my step great-grandfather to meet, marry, and l love again.
While I never knew my great-grandfather because he died many years before my father was born, I do have fond memories of my great-grandmother and my step great-grandfather. He was a happy jovial sort of man.
My great-grandmother was kind and gentle with me.
She was a quiet sort of woman.
Once again what I remember most about her is that far-away look of remembrance. Even when I was a teenager I knew she was remembering…
She WAS a woman of faith and she knew over the whole of her life God had supplied her needs.
God made a way for her when it must have seemed like there was no way.
In Proverbs 3:5-6 we are reminded to trust God to make a way,
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”
When her husband died (my great-grandfather) and she was left to raise her son in an isolated area in Montana, she trusted God.
In Isaiah 43:19 the prophet wrote:
“Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”
She eventually made the decision to travel back to Missouri
Because this quiet woman of faith cried out to the Lord she knew she was not alone. We are told in Psalm 27:7, “Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud; be gracious to me and answer me!”
Even when I visited her as a child I knew there was something different about my great-grandmother.
When I was young I did not know what it was, but I understood that she ‘knew’ something I did not know.
Her pensive ‘far-away’ look was not something I’d seen from my grandmothers and from my other great-grandmother.
As a young adult when I heard the whole story of her journeys, I started to understand some of the meaning of her far-away look. Today, I still remember that look and I am ever so grateful I knew my great-grandmother.
I think that’s because in some small way her story became part of my story about God.
Spiritual Practice: Your Story
Think about a faith story from your family or your past that had an impact on you.
In God, Deborah
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