A Long Life

I find myself in a weird place with summer coming to an end and school fixin' to start. I want very badly for more time to see people and have free time for hobbies but I also want school to start for routine and less drama in life. I told a friend of mine that I just wanted to start school and get buried in my books and for life to leave me alone. She promptly called me a nerd.

This week I got to visit some relatives on a trip to Dallas with some friends. I drove out to Wylie with my aunt to see my great aunt and uncle and my great grandmother who lives with them because she is too old to do things by herself. I haven't gotten to see her in years and wanted to attempt to see her as she is 97. I asked her many questions about growing up and what life was like. She was born in 1913 and moved to Texas in a wagon train at the age of 5. I asked her if that was dangerous at all and she said it really wasn't. She described a wagon train made up of all her relatives that she could run back and forth between. I thought the picture was cool. She went to Wellington(TX) high school and graduated in 1930 and was married about 5 months later. I can't imagine being married at 17. Wow. She told me about her kids(not like I don't know them personally, but she was telling this almost like I didn't) but apparently left out pieces of the story because of miscarrages and a seperation with her husband(though they got back together and had more children). My mom and my aunt filled in those pieces for me. I asked her if she was happy with her life and she said they never had much money but was happy. She thought once she was married she would have arrived. She would have achieved what she had been looking for, but was very wrong. She realized how much work marriage and raising children was. She came from a very small town and has lived a very long life. She lived there for a good part of 90 years. She returned home two weeks ago for her 80th high school reunion. No one else in her class was alive. She was the queen of the town for that weekend and felt like one. She loved it. I went to see her because I knew that while she may still be very much here, she may not have long to live in this world and I wanted to get to know my great grandmother better. I feel like I know her a lot better. It makes me sad that she felt like she had to skip the parts of her life that were hard or embarassing. My mom said that her and her husband came to know the Lord because of their seperation. That is an incredible story, but not one that she told me. Most of her kids are Bible believers and several are pretty adiment Chrisitians. I don't think that would be the case without her and her husband getting saved. I bring all this up because my Bible study group just finished up 1 Samuel and the picture I get of David is an incredible one. 1 Samuel does not tell all of David's story but it tells of a guy that trust God off and on, lies, cheats, steals, and does many other stupid things, but at the end of the day loves God and comes back to Him. God refers to him as a man after God's own heart. I guess the main thing I pull from David's story, and the main reason he is my favorite Bible character, is that God uses imperfect people that are willing to be used. Psalm 51 is a great passage that I suggest everyone look up. It is a Psalm of repentence about Bathsheba. I just love that David was so very real and was so very messed up. It proves to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that God can use this messed up person too. My great grandmother had her problems but still loves God. We ordered pizza while we were there and I fixed her plate and set it down and she wouldn't eat until we sat down and even when we did she just kept starring so I asked if she wanted to bless the food first (wondering if that is what she was waiting on) and so she held my hand and started talking to her savior. I just meant if she wanted us to pray but she led us in prayer. No human can judge a heart but I sure hope I get to see her in heaven with a perfect body that isn't old and broken.