....to Nanny's and Pawpaw's we go. Why am I so deeply in love with this place, these beloved sweet people that have come into my life by marriage? There are no words for them. Maybe it is because they hold some of what I feel was lost when losing my own dear Grandpa at the tender age of only 11...my life, my world, my very being at the time. He was the reason I lived in those dark times as my own family fought through their struggles. There is something about beloved Nanny and Pawpaw that I grasp onto, embracing them in ways that I find hard to do with others. I am so often given to distancing myself from people, places and things but with these 2 I have come to love them in ways that I loved my own dear Grandpa. They are so much to Brad and I, the very heritage of our children, the living link to the past, the storytellers of life and happenings of a day and place in time we never saw and our children can only ever imagine. The love they have and that they show for our own children is unsurpassed. I love that our children will grow up knowing them and loving them, as my own great grandparents died before I was ever born. It is an opportunity and a love for them that I was never able to take part of.
I love the whole experience of going there. I love what they have become to us, the journey going and the days spent in their sweet company. The enthusiasm we are greeted with, the huge wrap around porches and breezy TX days as children ride and run around laughing and exploring all of life. Things that leave permanent imprints on the memory and heart. But always, there is a deep sadness and a sense of mourning when we leave. The uncertainty of knowing just how long they will be here to love and for our children to know. How many of our children will know them in ways to remember like Brad and I do? How many will grow up with the memories of their farm, their chickens, the big ole fishing tank, the 2 of them sitting in their recliners laughing at the chidren's antics and loving everything they do....every word, every move, every new accomplishment the little ones have mastered and marveling over how the older ones have grown? How many will remember the long, winding drive to their big old farm house and the hugs and kisses showered upon them upon arriving? I suppose it is a bit morbid to even ponder these things...missing them before they are ever gone. But I cannot help but think what life will be like once they are no longer here. I cannot help but fight off feelings of selfishness of longing for them to be with us infinitely, eternally here on earth, until we all can be welcomed into Heaven together, instead of knowing they await us when we get there. I cannot imagine life without them. I cannot imagine having to make the transition from having them here and knowing they are only a drive away to the seeming emptiness of life without them. What a joy they are to our family, to Brad, to me. What a legacy. I cannot imagine living through the stories that they tell. I cannot even begin to fathom the pain of losing not only 1 but 2 little girls, to live through the times they have seen, the hardships, leaving home at the age of only 12, enduring the financial issues they have had to overcome, the depression era their parents fought and what they fought so hard to not only change but make better. To have lived in a trailer moving from state to state, job to job, raising a baby, losing 2, and fighting to better your life and plow the way through. They are amazing to me. Words seem to fail so miserably when trying to convey the deep respect and the love that Brad and I both have for them. I am amazed at what they have given the generations that have come from them by standing strong and firm and forging ahead in their belief in a God that does deliver, no matter how staunch and formal their trust in Him was and, to some great extent, still very much is. I am grateful for the heritage they have given to us and to their many great grandchildren...even if I did come into the picture many years later than Brad entered into it. And once again I am filled with awe and such a deep love for them as they have brought me into the family, accepted me and loved me like I am one of their very own and embraced the many children that God has not only blessed Brad and I with but the great grandchildren He has blessed them with through us. I love that they know....really KNOW.....the blessings that they are and the heritage that they are to the family, the very blood and life of them being past on to a time and a place they will never see. God's plan for the family still continues to amaze me and this place that we are in life. We are in the very middle of having living links to to a past we never saw and can only be told about and having living links to a future that we will never see, as they continue to outlive us in the generations to come. What a marvelous thing it is to experience it all and be able to touch the past and the future all at one time in life. It is an amazing thing to me that through us God has given them the ability to see the part of them that will live on long after they are gone.
I love them so much and fight to not hold on so tightly that I forget what it is that God seeks to accomplish in our lives and the blessings bestowed upon us while they are here and the heritage the children will continue to be to them after they are gone. Maybe it is pregnancy that makes one ponder all the things that are deep and mortal and what is only temporarily here with us on earth. Maybe it's the just the ebb and tide of life as I realize the gifts that I have been given, and have come to treasure things that have been so freely given to me. Maybe it's just the female emotions as I love deeply and have known loss and have suffered through the many ups and downs that only come from living and experiencing life fully. Maybe its just the emotions that come from watching my own miraculous children play and walk and talk and develop into their very own persons...how different they each are, how funny each of them are with their own unique character and personalities, how much wonder and awe fill me...along with some occasional passing feelings of incompetency....that God has seen us trustworthy enough and capable enough through Him to raise all of these children. It inspires me that He is growing Brad and I into what He has every intention of us being in Him through this life He has given us. It is an incredible thing to know that we once again have been so freely given yet another life to welcome into our family...one that we have never met but that we already love so deeply. The fulfillment and contentment that we have in life right now is unsurpassed...knowing that we are exactly where the Lord wants us to be yet still growing more and more into the likeness of Him as we attempt to continue to live out the convictions He has placed upon on our hearts.....concerning faith, children, finances, relationships. There is a deep abiding inner fulfillment that comes from doing exactly what it is we have been called to do. For Brad that consists of staying here, continuing to work for a dept that he loves and the guys that he is so bonded with, being blessed enough to be the sole provider of our family and provide for all of our needs and when funds have fallen short watching God step in and intervene on our behalf, being the leader of our home and raising his children with a Godly heritage, teaching them to be all that they can be and to lean on our God who is everything they will ever need in life...their provision, their protection, their fulfillment, their purpose, their happiness, their healer, the very reason they are here. There is a deep abiding contentment that he has from being in this place in life that God has placed before him and doing the task at hand. And there are blessings that abound upon our little family due to following the principles and be willing to heed the Lord and walk where He has called us to walk..learning what He has had us learn these past many years and only growing because of it...despite our many setbacks and lapses back into our mortal selfish selves as we have screamed to be delivered, wallowed in pity, railed in anger over the "lot" we had been given in life and cried out through many many tears of despair and years of frustration. Both of us would do every bit of it all over again to be where we are now in life, to be at the very place we sit and continue to grow and be stretched in now new and different areas. I am so glad we were never abandoned and so blessed that God saw in us people that He could transform and make into something so beautiful....so much so that He continued to heat us in His furnace and painfully mold us into what we have become in Him....and yet still so far from what He desires us to be.
For me, the fulfillment comes from living out His calling placed on a woman's life by managing the home while Brad works and leads. I pray fervently that we can instill these same principles in our own sons and daughters in a world that so desperately flings around women's rights and compels women into the workforce. In a society that grows increasingly worse about demeaning men and their roles as the head of the home and being the sole provider for the family Brad and I seek to raise up the traditional values in our own children. It is our goal to teach them that what the world commands must be a 2 income family just by living standards alone that they can overcome this and they can live within their means so that they can live freely and contentedly in their roles the Lord has laid out for each of them. Our girls raising their own sons and daughters into the next God fearing generation that will carry on..staying home and tending to and nurturing their own sweet babies. And for our sons to go out and provide for their own brides and families, head up their home, and teach their children about Godly heritage and what God has been so faithful to do in our family. For me my contentment comes from teaching them to listen, heed the words of the Lord, and to tread carefully so that they never wander from where He wants them as I was so given to do.....to listen intently to what their purpose is in life whether it be missionaries, presidents, involved in government, or vessels God uses to heal the sick. I want to teach them about Him and how to be living, walking, breathing testimonies who live out their lives showing people how Gods mercy and grace is used to transform and save others by bringing them into His kingdom or establishing ministries to help those that are trying to desperately search out the heart of God and continue on in the journey they have already begun. My contentment and fulfillment comes from staying home raising them, figuring out that I can cloth diaper, make bread and sew and discovering the unexpected fulfillment that comes along with it. It is keeping house, managing our home, farming, gardening, kissing boo boo's, tending to needs, rocking sleepy babies and toddlers, being in awe of ugly bugs and geckos, being filled with laughter at the funny antics of a stupid dog, baby kittens, baby goats, marveling at growing seeds and the tiniest things that I have long sense forgotten to be in awe over. Teaching them about the world around them....the inventors and the missionaries that have gone before them, teaching them to make wise choices, and loving on them every minute knowing that God has given me the responsibility of teaching them and raising them to honor and fear Him.
I don't know why such deep thoughts today. Too much time on my hands, I suppose, as everyone is busy playing and napping. How his turned into adoration for Nanny and Pawpaw and ended up here I'm not really very sure. I read this in the comments of the blog "Joel's Journey" and it comes from one of the many books R.M. Ballantyne has written. It is my hope at some point to have our boys read all 70 of his great historical writings written for adventuresome boys, luring them into a part of history and real life historical heroes through action and adventure. It is quotes like these that inspire me to teach and raise them to their utmost potential and to see them grow to be great God fearing people, carrying on the legacy and heritage they have been given.
"Boys [should be] inured from childhood to trifling risks and slight dangers of every possible description, such as tumbling into ponds and off of trees, etc., in order to strengthen their nervous system... They ought to practice leaping off heights into deep water. They ought never to hesitate to cross a stream over a narrow unsafe plank for fear of a ducking. They ought never to decline to climb up a tree, to pull fruit merely because there is a possibility of their falling off and breaking their necks. I firmly believe that boys were intended to encounter all kinds of risks, in order to prepare them to meet and grapple with risks and dangers incident to man’s career with cool, cautious self-possession..." —R.M. Ballantyne, The Gorilla Hunters
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