A Granny's Word

i often muse over the memories spent with my granny-- what she taught me, still teaches me, how the Father used her to help form me, still helps form me. the simplicities of life to cherish... her wisdom forever shapes me and speaks into my life. i hold her dear to my heart today just as i did years ago as a child learning the ways of the ocean. she is a teacher and my granny.

for years, she has written an article each week in the Victoria Advocate, relating her relationship with God to that of her experiences with the ocean. after visiting for Thanksgiving, she emailed me a rough version of what was to be published the following weekend.

here is the link to the article in the paper:

http://www.victoriaadvocate.com/841/story/162197.html

here's the article just in case the link doesn't work:

"Teaching grandchildren is harder now" by: Elaine Wheat

December 01, 2007
“Remember the days of old; consider the years of many generations.”

Deuteronomy 32:7

Today I enjoyed remembering the days of old, considering the years of many generations.

My oldest grandgirl, Dyanne, came to visit me. And, after catching up with each other’s lives, and looking forward to great things to come for her, like graduation from A&M with a teaching degree, and me being able to brag on another Ms. Wheat teacher, we wanted to look backward to the way we were.

I got out a bunch of old VCR tapes to refresh our memories and, after watching several, Dyanne asked me, “Granny, don’t we have any tapes where we are not in or at the water? I would like to see one of me where I’m not wearing one of your old tie-died, wet shirts, a used fishing cap or visor, and not have wet, stringy hair.”

I assured her that I had only gotten out the best ones for our viewing of the way we really were, and, truly, I had not realized that in my way of thinking that naturally included water being swam in or fished in.

After the full viewing, we voted that our favorite one was when Dyanne was about 7 and Marilyn Elaine was about 4 years old and not yet married to an Air Force jet mechanic and living near London. Who would have ever guessed that those two precious pre-people running around on the beach would grow up and actually be adults?

I want to share something with you: Being Granny back then was a lot easier than being Granny now. When “remembering the days of old” our roles were well-defined. Granny taught them important things like how to cast, where they could swim and not to run on the little wooden crabbing bridge. It was their role to do the things they were taught. Well, most of the time anyway. Marilyn didn’t actually run on the bridge but she did do this crazy looking skippy-hoppity-waddling thing instead of running.

The only thing hard about those days of old was for me to remember to trust them and not constantly say granny type things like, “Be careful, don’t run, and keep your mouth shut when you are throwing bread balls up in the air because a beautiful seagull might poop in it.”

I taught, they learned and we all trusted each other to do our things.

Now they are adults, and I am not good at being an adult’s granny. I still know a few things that they need to know, but I have a hard time just letting them learn those things instead of me teaching them. I guess I have to learn from them that it is now time for me to learn to keep my mouth shut or something unpleasant may happen to me.

Dear Lord, please help my generation to pray that You keep Your arm around our shoulders and Your hand over our mouths. How can our kids or grandkids learn faith if all they have to do is teach us to mind ourselves?