Legacy of Bravery
Mary’s Monday Musings to Quilt Encouragement
Legacy of Bravery
One benefit of growing older is the privilege of perspective it brings. I see the legacy of bravery my grandmother provided our large family which I couldn’t define when I was a child. Life didn’t go according to the pattern my grandmother expected as a small child. At the age of seven, her parents and siblings left her in Europe with her grandparents while they moved from the land of their ancestors to come to America where the promise of employment beckoned. At the age of eight, she followed their journey on a great steamship, crossing the vast ocean in the company of an uncle barely out of his teens. She was pretty much left to her own devices on the ship. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have handled the family separation and the adventure of travel, as well as my grandmother did. When restored to her family, there was the adjustment to school in a language she didn’t know.
When she told her story, she was filled with laughter and focused on the blessing of plentiful spoiling from her grandparents and subsequently from the ladies on the ship who felt sorry for her traveling more or less on her own. Somehow, she had learned a brand of bravery from the entire experience and focused on the good parts. Life continued to challenge her bravery. Her husband’s response to occupational problems, the subsequent subsistence living with her nine children on the farm, the loss of a baby to the Pandemic of 1918, the tensions of World War ll, the loss of an adult son to cancer. Who can enumerate the scope of issues that stabbed at her heart from kicking cows to whooping cough to destructive weather?
Through it all, she developed a relationship of relying on God. Her heavenly Father sustained her and raised her up to become a remarkable, resilient woman. Her mere presence helped those of us who called her grandma to face the trials of life better because of her upbeat way of looking at life. God help us see You and Your help in every type of trial that besets our lives. Help us draw the strength from you to live in this world as long as we draw breath. Help us articulate Your strength to the generation that comes after us.
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