Tuesday, April 03, 2012

Our Christian History- Grandma

I've been thinking of how the Help and I practice and live this label of "Christian." But before I even touch that I have to start with my grandmother, the mean one.
She lived and died in North Carolina and really didn't care to leave it. Before she married my grandfather, she was a Methodist or maybe AME, not really sure. Granddaddy was a deacon in his Baptist church and apparently grandma had to become Baptist in order for that to occur. She became a deaconess at the little NC church where many decades later she had her funeral.
She can claim some small part in my faith walk. Well besides the Baptist history in the family, there were the monthly, quarterly phone calls I'd have to make. Usually I'd wait for 2 different family members to get on my case and say I had to call her. She was an unpleasant woman.
Anyway, she'd ask if I'd gone to church. At the time I was in college and I'd say yes. I guess it would  have been easier to lie, but instead I made sure I was in a church at least once a month. That was my loose tether, keeping me in the fold of G-d, or at least visiting a community of his people. From there I eventually decided one Lent, sometime after college, to go to church once a week.
But back to Grandma. There is something, I believe my mother said about her that is beginning to haunt me. Grandma did not believe in doing any work on Sunday. She would not even pick up scissors. I am trying to reduce if not not do anything on Sunday, except cook. I'd like to resist the temptation of making anyone work for me, such as the cashiers at IKEA, the movie house staff, even the operators in Delhi, on the Sabbath. I'm not there yet.
Despite being Christian, she was mean. She seemed to love to find your buttons, and push them. I credit her with her second husband's death. Of course, she could have been a much meaner, nastier person without Christ.

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