Tonight

Please take a moment to pray for my mom and my gramma today. My gramma took a fall this morning so they spent the day together at the emergency room, where six hours later they were informed the x-rays were negative. My gramma is sore and not doing very well. The time change and longer hours of darkness seem to be making things harder. My mom is there daily and is getting very tired trying to make things better but not being able to really fix it for my gramma.

This afternoon when I got off work I went over to my gramma's to sit with her while my mom did a few errands. She is spending the night there so she needed to go home to pack an overnight bag and then to the store. My gramma was groggy and her whole body hurts. She was sweetly confused. She and I chatted about a lot of nothing but somehow, it was a precious moment. I will admit to you that I did not necessarily love heading there straight from work. I have been sick for two days and I was tired and I remain selfish enough to want my time to myself. So often I do things knowing they are right but with a very not right heart. I didn't really mind helping for a little while, I just would've rather that all was well and so my own desires could've been first.

Gramma chatted and chatted and it seemed she was imagining I was still a little girl. Yet, she told me it had been over eleven years since my grampa died, and so she was not entirely incoherent. I think what was happening was that something in her allowed the very center of her spirit to rise to the surface, and at her very core she was enjoying my company. My gramma loves me, she loves me so very much. She loved me as a child but as I grew up and became my own person, I think she found it harder to relate to me in that unguarded and passionate way she had loved me when I was young. In adulthood she became worried about how I was managing my life (and probably rightfully so) and our conversations often ended up sounding less than loving.

Today, she loved me again like she used to. I don't think she ever stopped loving me but we can get so tangled up in ourselves, can't we? We can worry this or that idea to death and forget that the worry comes from love. I loved my few hours with my gramma today. I was not sad. I talked to her about whatever thought rambled across our paths. We discussed the furniture she wants me to have some day. She called me a "doll." She held my hand and we kissed on the lips. It was all well and good with us today. For a moment she nodded off to sleep and I sat in her chair looking around her house. I wanted to get up and go exploring like I did as a child, finding treasures everywhere. I know many of those childhood keepsakes are still there, like the doll dresser that stands against a wall in my grampa's room. I wanted to bury my face in her sweet-smelling blankets where we used to snuggle when I spent the night. But she is a light sleeper and I knew if I got up to wander she'd awaken and I was afraid she try to stand and fall again. So I sat there quietly asking the Lord to fill this house with angels' song. I asked him to surround my gramma with joy. I asked him to express his love to her as well as she once expressed it to me.

I love my gramma and she loves me. I have wanted to scream as she criticized me and pushed my buttons. She was not correct, then again; neither was I. We didn't grow up well together. I am grateful that now our guard can fall a little bit. Now it is like she is the little girl and I am the adult. I pray that she will know great love has been hers, from God and from me.

Zephaniah 3:17 The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing."