What My Grandmame� Taught Me | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: What My Grandmame� Taught Me | Previous Challenge Entry
By
09/08/05
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I just love old people! As long as I can remember, I have loved to listen to the wisdom with which they speak. They choose their words with patience, not with the eagerness and hurried language of my peers. When I look into someone’s eyes and see a lifetime already lived, I wait with great anticipation for what they choose to say.
My great-grandmother lived 106 years before she went to be with the Lord, and I was able to share in the last 28. Grandmame’ lost her sight in her 80’s, so I always wondered if she even knew what I looked like. My mother told me that no one knew she was blind until she was frying bacon one day and dropped the frying pan splattering hot grease all over her arms and face. They knew then that a woman that had been frying bacon for that many years does not all of a sudden start dropping the pan. She was taken to several optometrists who all said the same thing which was that her sight was too far gone and it was nothing that anyone could do about it.
Despite the fact that she had lost her sight, Grandmame’ still loved the word of God, and as early as I can remember someone was always reading it to her. Naturally when I started reading, my nightly routine joyously evolved to reading the bible to Grandmame’. Many nights as I turned the pages of the Psalms of David and began to read, she would begin to cry. She would lift up her eyes and her hands as if reaching up to touch heaven.
I can remember as though it were yesterday, the day I read her 1 John 2:15-17. It says Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world--the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life--is not of the Father but is of the world. 17 And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever. My great grandmother with her thick French accent, said "Bebe, I said bon voyage to the things of this world a long time ago." As a child of only 9, I responded accordingly "Grandmame’, what does that mean? Bon voyage?" Then she turned to me. She pulled herself up slowly in her bed and said, "Well it means to leave it alone. Move on down the road, and do not go back."
I sat perplexed for a while, not truly understanding what she meant. However, for some reason those words stuck with me. Maybe it was the slight smile that formed on her brown wrinkled face as she said it. Perhaps it was the brightness of her brown eyes that could not even see me, but for some reason I remembered those words into my adulthood. I found that whenever I did something that I knew was wrong in God’s sight my Grandmame’s words would come back to me. It was as though I were back on that wooden stool leaning over her bed reading the bible.
I too have said bon voyage to the things of the world, now with the understanding of what it means. It means taking the road less traveled. It is living a life that is set apart which is something that people do not want to do or even think about. It is living by a standard rarely spoken of, even in Christian circles, holiness. God says Be holy, for I am holy (1 Peter 1:16). My great grandmother taught me in one sentence through one scripture the cornerstone that has marked my life…to say bon voyage to the things of this world is to live a life of holiness. I thank the Lord for what my Grandmame’ taught me.

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