April 5th, Granky Day: A Celebration of Life, Love, and Laughter
If everyone knew what a few of us do, April 5 would be a national holiday. We would call it “Granky Day.”
Granky Day would be a celebration of all the precious women who have lived holy lives, but refused to be “holier-than-thou.” It would be a day to celebrate a woman who exuded radiant beauty and modesty in equal parts. It would be a day to celebrate a woman whose femininity was only matched by her untiring work ethic. It would be a day to celebrate a woman whose laugh could make you laugh, even when the joke made no sense at all.
April 5th is my maternal Grandmother’s birthday. Her name is Nova Dean Henager. She would have been 84 this year had she not died a few years back. She celebrated in a place where they don’t mark birthdays because no one grows old. I celebrated in a quiet place in my soul, where I remembered how blessed I was to have such a guileless, beautiful person influence my life.
When she passed, one of my aunts asked me to write a piece for the commemorative brochure that would be given to all those attending her funeral. It was a great honor to me to be asked to do that.
Here is what I wrote…
And (Jesus) said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. ~Matthew 18:3
She was a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and great-great grandmother. She was a pastor’s wife, counselor, teacher, and friend— especially to those who most needed a friend. Not many called her Nova or Nova Dean. A few called her Mrs. Henager. But everyone who knew her, who really knew her, called her Granky.
The world is full of wonderful grandmothers, grannies, and grandmas. But, as far as we know, there has only ever been one Granky.
What is a Granky? A Granky is a grandmother who never let the child inside her die. A Granky is a woman with an indomitable spirit, an insatiable thirst for godliness, and an untiring devotion to God, His church, and her family. A Granky tells her famous “monkey stories” to kids, while adults gather in the shadows to listen, laugh, and remember how good it feels to be a kid. A Granky makes the world’s greatest rolls (and cinnamon rolls).
A Granky loves Christmas and summer youth camps as much as any child. A Granky is a woman of timeless beauty and simple, childlike faith. A Granky may grow old, but she doesn’t have to “grow up.” She may grow tired…and fall asleep…
But when she finally does, she wakes, refreshed, forever youthful…in the arms of her Jesus.
Happy birthday to my Granky…and to every godly woman whose life and love is a legacy your children will always revere, thank you.
Happy Granky Day.
They Call Me Mr. Brightside: Finding the Positive in the Negative
Apparently, I am in danger of losing my membership in the Eternal Optimists Club due to my recent less-than-cheery communications. This is an attempt to correct my course.
I have decided to list 10 negative things and look on the bright side of each. (I know I can do this.) So here goes…
- My truck was stolen, BUT at least no one was in it at the time.
- I have not been deployed to a storm since November, BUT my own house has not been hit by one either.
- My grandson lives in Colorado, so I cannot just see him any time I want. BUT, I have a grandson and he lives in Colorado.
- I am still carrying around 30 pounds more than I want, BUT I am eating well.
- I sometimes cannot think of a word I want to use when I am writing, BUT I can usually think of a suitable synonym.
- The bright red Chevrolet Cobalt I am driving looks like a blood blister and feels like (after driving my roomy four-door Dodge Ram for five years) I have moved out of a sprawling estate into an economy apartment, BUT the heater and radio work fine, so I can keep warm and listen to the Ticket.
- The Cowboys, once again, are not in the Super Bowl, BUT Jerry Jones has decided if we cannot go to the mountain, the mountain will come to us…next year.
- My goatee is nearly 100% gray now, negatively impacting my youthful look; BUT the hair on my head seems to be hanging in there
- I am not that great at taking life’s lemons and making lemonade, BUT I don’t really like lemonade that much anyway.
- I may be losing my membership in the Eternal Optimists Club, BUT there is always The Jelly of the Month Club, and that is “the gift that keeps on giving.”
There. See? I’m Mr. Brightside.
And now, in support of my new outlook, I introduce a fellow optimist and her sweet ukulele…
Isn’t she sweet? And doesn’t it seem like she almost believes every word of that song?
Keep on the sunny side, friends.
Mr. Brightside, signing off.
This Too Shall Pass…But How?
Disclaimer: If you are a Christian weak in the faith or easily swayed by the brutal honesty of a man you might ordinarily expect to encourage and uplift you by handing you a pair of rose-tinted glasses and calling them “Faith,” then please…read no further. This is a blog and a blog is a journey. The journeyer sometimes knows where he is going and sometimes he doesn’t even know where he is coming from. So, read at your own risk.
Mark this under the heading, “Things I Would Have Told You Then, But Didn’t Know Until Now. Sorry About That.”
I remember repeating from the pulpit the oft-told story about the woman who testified in prayer meeting, “Whenever I have any trouble, I open my Bible and read. It isn’t very long before I see the words, ‘And it came to pass.’ That’s when I close my Bible and say, ‘Thank God it didn’t come to stay. It came to pass.’”
Don't come unraveled
I told that story, as did ten thousand other preachers, to encourage people not to whine too much about their troubles, not to fret overmuch about hardships. We reasoned that these things are temporary. They pass. You know, the ol’ “Tough times never last; tough people do” kind of speech. Probably we wanted to encourage folks who were going through bad times. Or, maybe we just wearied of listening to their incessant bitching.
In any case, we weren’t lying. Troubles are temporary. Tough times usually don’t last. God is good. This little bit of suffering is nothing compared to eternal bliss. All that. True enough.
But we might have left a couple of things out, probably because we just didn’t know better.
“This, too, shall pass.” We know that. What else do we need to know?
First, how will it pass? Will it recede quietly into the night, just slip away while you sleep, maybe leave an “I’m Sorry” note and a chocolate on your pillow? Will you wake tomorrow and the problem just packed its bags and left somewhere in the night?
Not likely. It is more apt to pass the way a kidney stone does, with its jagged edges wreaking havoc, buckling your knees, tearing through you like Quantrill’s Raiders. It may leave you (euphemistically speaking, of course) pissing blood for days after it’s departure. But at least it will be gone and you should feel better soon.
Second consideration is this: why does it pass? Maybe it is like the joke about how big the mosquitoes are in Houston. A guy said he overheard two mosquitoes discussing whether to eat him right there on the spot or cart him off somewhere before the big mosquitoes showed up and took him from them. Maybe that is why that little heartache, setback, bump in the road passed.
Maybe when your trouble left, it was just getting out of the way of what’s coming.
I know this line of reasoning is pessimistic, but that doesn’t mean it cannot be true. It can be. It might be.
Are you ready to deal with that?
Yesterday was a horrible day at my house. There was tension, disagreements, problems to solve, issues to resolve. At the end of the day, my wife climbed into my beautiful, silver Dodge Ram pickup truck. I was picking her up from work.
She shook her head and let out a cleansing little sigh, saying, “What a day, huh?”
“Yeah. Thank God it is just about over,” says me.
At 6:30 this morning, I went to start that same truck to let its engine warm. It wasn’t where I left it. It wasn’t anywhere close to where I left it. It was gone. Just…gone. Stolen by a faceless, nameless thief.
(I had to pause to regain myself from a fit of maniacal laughter just now. Sorry.)
And we thought yesterday’s troubles couldn’t end soon enough. We didn’t know they were just scooting over for the big boys, who were moving in today.
It isn’t like we weren’t warned. Momma said there would be days like this. So did Job…and Jesus:
“Man that is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble.” ~Job 14:1
“…in the world you shall have tribulation…” ~John 16:33
So, yeah. There you have it. Troubles do eventually pass. Some linger for years. Some even a lifetime. Whether now (this life, this realm) or later (the afterlife, eternity), all troubles will pass. The passing may be unpleasant. The troubles yet to come may make you pine for the ones you have now, as if these were blessings and not burdens.
I just wanted you to know: troubles come and troubles go. Some troubles are coming while the others are going. Sometimes you can take positive actions to hasten their departure. Other times, all you can do is let them run their course.
One thing I know: without faith in a higher purpose, without faith that all of this seeming madness makes sense to the One Whose perspective is as high above ours as the heavens are above the earth, this constant parade of trouble might get more than a little disheartening.
Fly Right — A Devotional
Dead flies putrefy the perfumer’s ointment…
Even when a fool walks along the way, He lacks wisdom, and he shows everyone
that he is a fool.
Ecclesiastes 10:1a,3
Getting his strut on
Here’s another fly Solomon found in the ointment: the hypocrisy of a fool. The foolish person wants to seem self-sufficient, like he’s got it all figured out. He won’t ask for directions. He doesn’t need any one’s advice. He won’t seek input, even in the big decisions of life. In his mind, he convinces himself that he looks pretty smooth. He doesn’t know how transparent he is. He doesn’t know how foolish he appears.
I like the way the New Living Translation records verse 3: “You can identify fools just by the way they walk down the street!”
You can almost see the fool strutting in those words, can’t you? Putting on airs. Pretending to be what he isn’t. And maybe the only one he really fools is himself. How wretched the aroma of the hypocritical life! Just read how Jesus addressed such people in the gospels. He pulled no punches, calling the Pharisees “whited sepulchers,” pretty on the outside, but full of dead men’s bones.
God demands and deserves honesty. Let’s avoid the hypocrisy of fools.
A Prayer for Today: “Father,I am not everything I ought to be. I am probably not everything many people believe me to be. But I pray that the one thing I might be is honest. I commit to living honestly and openly before You. Amen.”
NOTE: This is part three of a four-part series:
Part One: Flies in the Ointment
Part Two: Shoo Fly, Shoo!
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The JourneyMan by D. Gene Strother is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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