Family
GOD AND GRANNY’S UNCONDITIONAL LOVE
Sue Stidham
She was born of German immigrants in the year 1900. My thoughts of her take me to her kitchen at the stove or seeing her seated at her quilting frame. She was short, round and with her hip-length hair neatly braided and wound into a small bun at the back of her heard, she spent many hours making the best meals of my childhood.
Raised in a large family, who worked the earth, she had been taught never to waste anything – not even the collected plastic bags she skillfully turned into braided rugs. (These were very useful under my grandfather’s muddy boots.) Nor did she discard old newspapers and pieces of string that she used to wrap a jar of freshly made preserves she was sending home with me. She had so much to teach and I hung onto every word she said; even when I thought “I don’t need to know how to do that in this day and age.”
My grandmother was the only person I knew who generously offered unconditional love, to everyone. She’s been gone more than fifteen years now but I still miss her dearly. However, I believe I am so blessed to have known her and have her as a major influence in my life. Allow me to tell you why.
My happiest childhood memories take me to her house that was often filled with the aroma of freshly baked bread or that morning’s batch of bread and butter pickles. Other family often commented on how “old-fashioned” she was. “Why won’t she just keep up with the times?” was spoken frequently. I am so glad she didn’t; it just wasn’t who she was.
Emma was a gentle-natured rock in a rapidly changing world. When the 1960s hit the country and things were shown on television that were alien to her, she shook her head and expressed solemn concern. I didn’t understand why, but I knew the events were part of life she wanted no part in. She was happy to shut it all out and remain in her secluded and simplified world, her home.
She spent her lifetime caring for others and being what she knew to be, taken from Titus 2:3-5. “The aged women likewise, that they be in behavior as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.”
At the age of 5, and the oldest of 12 children, her mother began training my grandmother for the life expected of a girl in those early days of the 1900s. Her mother set a dishpan of soapy water on a chair so she could reach and my grandmother washed the dishes. At the age of 12, she was hired out to live with a more well to do family, to care for their children and help with the household chores. She remained in their employ until her own marriage.
Grandma made all the clothing for her own eight children, quilted, canned, feather stuffed mattresses, and made lye soap. (Which she even used for washing dishes) In addition, she had an unbelievable green thumb. She used, for most, an unnoticed patience to teach the grandkids how to do these things, when they were around and showed an interest. I always was and did, simply because it was her doing the teaching.
More than any other lesson and by example, she taught me the importance of family, the Bible and unconditional love. Grandma was always there for me when I had a hurt, a question or wanted to sit on her lap. She unselfishly stopped whatever she was doing to accommodate without a word.
After I entered my teen years and acquired my driver’s license, she would ask me to drive her. We would go to five or six little Mom and Pop stores all over town to find the right brand of canning lids or Castile Soap for her hair. She would only wash her ‘crown of glory’ in rainwater and Castile Soap. Occasionally, I would drive my grandparents upstate to my aunt’s house. Then there were the trips to the country to see the distant cousins at a family picnic. I never minded at all; I just enjoyed being with her. Later, though in adulthood, married and with two children of my own, I still relied on her words of wisdom. She had many home remedies (that actually worked) and always the best recipes.
Proverbs 31:10-31 describes the ideal woman. I don’t hesitate to say Grandma Emma lived up to those words. She was not a saint because I thought so, but because God did. She didn’t follow God’s Word to teach only me, but everyone she met.
She was surrogate mom and grandma to the entire neighborhood and to many others. She never had unreasonable expectations or advised in a meddling way. She just loved – unconditionally. Jesus gives us this same unconditional love and beyond. Ephesians 3 tells us that God’s love is total. It reaches every corner of our experience. It is ultimate in breadth, length, depth and height. We can be as totally secure in Him, as I felt in my grandmother’s lap.
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Oh for some of these standards today! Good to hear old time stories of old time saints.
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