Saturday, 11/15/14
Jesus told a story about a widow who kept coming to a judge,
asking him to render a decision in her favor. He told the story as a way of
encouraging us to keep praying for what is right.
However, the story turned me to thinking about older ladies who have no one to help them out of their troubles. Anyone with the time and the desire to do charitable work could do nothing more pleasing to God than for him or her to get involved with helping ladies who have no one else to help them.
Let me digress to describe a case of that sort from my family. It is concerned with my grandmother. In 1875 my grandfather and a partner came over from Limerick City with just enough cash to open a general store in my home town. The store caught on pretty well, and Grandfather married my grandmother, a girl whose family had come over in 1840,and who had settled across the state from the general store.
Then, in 1888 my grandfather came down with tuberculosis, and my grandmother took him and their two small boys to where her parent's family could care for him. Grandfather died there, and afterwards Grandmother with the two boys and a baby girl came back, asking her husband’s former partner for her husband’s share of their store.
However, the story turned me to thinking about older ladies who have no one to help them out of their troubles. Anyone with the time and the desire to do charitable work could do nothing more pleasing to God than for him or her to get involved with helping ladies who have no one else to help them.
Let me digress to describe a case of that sort from my family. It is concerned with my grandmother. In 1875 my grandfather and a partner came over from Limerick City with just enough cash to open a general store in my home town. The store caught on pretty well, and Grandfather married my grandmother, a girl whose family had come over in 1840,and who had settled across the state from the general store.
Then, in 1888 my grandfather came down with tuberculosis, and my grandmother took him and their two small boys to where her parent's family could care for him. Grandfather died there, and afterwards Grandmother with the two boys and a baby girl came back, asking her husband’s former partner for her husband’s share of their store.
After that man denied all of Grandmother's claims, she turned herself into a milliner, supporting her little family by fashioning fine hats for rich ladies. Then, after her boys were old enough to bring in a little money running errands, Grandmother started using her earnings for lawyers to sue her husband's former partner. With no success, those lawsuit went on and on until Grandmother was too old to keep up her sewing.
She and her grown daughter who cared for her lived on with my parents and the six of us kids. Grandmother died when I was twelve, leaving us nothing but her bitterness. (I did see her happy once. That was when I asked her what she remembered from the Civil War, and getting up, she jigged to the tune, singing, “We’ll hang Jeff Davis on a sour apple tree.”)
She and her grown daughter who cared for her lived on with my parents and the six of us kids. Grandmother died when I was twelve, leaving us nothing but her bitterness. (I did see her happy once. That was when I asked her what she remembered from the Civil War, and getting up, she jigged to the tune, singing, “We’ll hang Jeff Davis on a sour apple tree.”)
1 comment:
I love that story Father. Your Grandmother sounds like quite a lady. I am an adopted only child and I never really felt like I had any heritage. After I married, I decided to adopt my husband's heritage. My parents were never really all that interested in their ancestry. It is nice to have a lineage to claim as your own. God bless, Theresa Longino
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