I can still smell the salisbury steak, peas, and mashed potatoes and see them all in their neat little sections on the black plastic microwavable plate. The brown heavily salted gravy in a packet and the metal old fashion silver fork. I can see the big tall glass of milk and harvest gold countertops behind where we ate.
I can still see the calendar and phone on the desk next to the stove, where my cousins and I decorated the stove guards that rested on each of the burners. I drew one of my famous pine trees on mine. The phone was a landline and one I used to call my dad’s new navy blue flip cell phone (it had a camera!!) and Time and Temp. I can still hear the operator’s voice.
It’s almost spooky how I can truly visualize every corner of that house down to the decor on the walls and carpet stains and what she kept in each bedroom drawer. Her house was one I often went to during the summer. The house of my 90+ year old great grandmother.
Back to the salisbury steak and ice cream cup dinner (our traditional meal from a food delivery service)… it was there in that orange and brown wallpapered room that she told me a lot about her life. While she only gave me bread crumbs and appropriate headlines for a young preteen girl to know, I knew from those stories that her life wasn’t easy. Not just in chapters, but in whole. Her stories are not mine to share to the world wide web, but I was deeply impacted by three things as she shared. The pain she had gone through and her smile as she told me about it. Not only that, but I was impacted by the prayers that followed the stories.
She had two bedrooms in that house, one where her sewing machines slept, and one where her and I did when I spent the night. I can still see the teddy bear (that my son now plays with) on her bed and the quilt she made on top of the sheets. It was there that I heard the private prayers of someone whom I dearly adored.
Some of her prayers were quirky and and unrealistic, my pubescent self thought, but they were certainly genuine. Some of them were just heart wrenchingly honest that I wished I wasn’t even in the room for because it felt like I was eavesdropping on such an incredibly holy moment. But it was there where I learned that prayers could be honest and not polished or recited or even pretty at times.
Isn’t it funny what you remember when you look back?
I also keep thinking about something else she told me that brings comfort to this season of my life. I wish I could go back and ask her more questions about it. And more about the trials she endured. How did she find the courage, strength, endurance, and persistence to keep putting one foot in front of the other even after the darkest of days?
Sometimes people who have believed in God found him by having their entire life ripped apart from under them and those with a more… gentle?… testimony are jealous of those with such a huge difference between before and after. And then those with more distinct life before Jesus are envious of those who don’t have any scars from past decisions made without faith.
It was there in that kitchen of my great grandma’s, surrounded by her metal pencil sharpener collection, that I heard her story one TV dinner at a time. And it was there in her bedroom where I heard her prayers. Proving to me that even if one has a legacy of faith in their life, it doesn’t promise that things will be easy or even tolerable but that we can talk to God about all of it.
It also showed me one very important thing that I still cling to believe today no matter what life throws at me. Through all the up’s and down’s…
God is a keeper.
Remember those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you; and considering the result of their conduct, imitate their faith.
Hebrews 13:7
