Beautiful Testimony

Titus 2:3-5
Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips, nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good, that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be dishonored.

My grandmother is one of the most beautiful women I know. She is my mentor, my example. She is amazing, and everyone who meets her sees that. She got married at 15 years old and she and my grandfather had 6 children. She was and is faithfully devoted to her family, working at the post office to support her family while my grandfather was in a sanitorium with tuberculosis. When I was growing up, Grandma and Granddad would come from Virginia to visit our Ohio home. Whenever my sister, brother, and I had friends over, they would all fall in love with my grandparents. It got to a point where we wouldn’t tell our friends Grandma and Granddad were coming because we wouldn’t get enough time with them! She is now 89 years old, has been married for 74 years, and has 60 grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren.

Grandma has had a full life with great friends and many family blessings. She makes each and every one of her 60 grandchildren feel just as loved, special, and cherished as all of the others. She is always doing for others; to list all of the things she has done would fill volumes! She loves to tell stories, messing them up, backtracking, starting them over until she has us all laughing and laughing. She is kind to everyone, even when others don’t show her kindness. I have never seen her respond to anyone in a negative way; she is always nice, loving, kind, and gentle. My grandmother doesn’t know a stranger; she makes friends with everyone! She knows all her neighbors and invites everyone she meets to church. Grandma is fun, she’s wise, and she’s the classiest woman I know.

My grandmother has lived through heartache, things that would make other people bitter. Every parent’s worst fear came true for her when her daughter, my mother, died from cancer 9 years ago. Grandma dropped everything and traveled to Ohio to help my sister care for her. Grandma was holding Mom’s hand when she passed away. It must be sheer agony for a mother to watch her child die, but Grandma cherished the time she was able to spend with her daughter those last few weeks.

Whenever my grandmother visits or I visit her, I see her reading her Bible every morning. Not a day goes by that she doesn’t read it. I think a lot of times people don’t know the things they do that make an impact on another person. Seeing her read her Bible every day, her daily walk with the Lord, her love for the Lord that never wavers in good times or bad, and her devotion to taking the time to spend with Him no matter how busy her life was or is, that is a testimony that has had a tremendous impact on me.