Grandma Great

     Hebrews Chapter 11 is considered our genealogy of faith. By faith Noah, by faith Abraham, by faith Sarah, by faith Moses. We too have that genealogy of faith.

     Grandma told me once when staying with us that she wanted to be a missionary. Well she didn’t make it to another country but more importantly she became a testament of faith to her friends and community and most of all to her family.

     As the youngest child, Grandma never felt she really knew some of her brothers and sisters and therefore wanted to ensure that her own children would know each other. This became her legacy-a family connected through holidays, vacations and reunions. For us as the grandchildren, we were blessed to spend time with aunts, uncles and cousins.

     We each grew up with our own stories of campouts in the back yard or back room, Grandpa’s late night trips to the kitchen for ice cream, walks to the park and then jumping into a freezing swimming pool in Marcus.

     We each helped Grandma at the library and ran all over Marcus and back home to Grandma’s cookies. I remember creamed tuna on toast, Kix cereal, baths in the sunk in tub, endless board games and piles of books on every end table.

     Her legacy includes memories of family camping trips to Wisconsin, catching fireflies in South Bend, sledding at the golf course in Burlington, and in Omaha an old metal highchair that held all the little cousins.

     The word that has played through my mind this week is perseverance. Grandma has with perseverance run the race set before her. She has shown us what the fruit of the Spirit looks like-love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

     When I told Liz Marie that Grandma Great had died, we talked about the major party happening in heaven. She is now with her brothers and sisters, a mother he never grew up knowing, her father, grandparents, a child and grandchild she didn’t know this side of heaven, Alan, Jon, and Grandpa.

     The highlight came when Jesus took her by the hand and said, “Well done my good and faithful servant-Welcome home.”

     And so now we can add a verse 41 to Hebrews 11, “By faith Helen”.

(Picture taken of Grandma Great and Ian when he was 4 days old. Grandma had been living in Colorado but then went back to Marcus, Iowa the next week.)