3-5/the prequel 3 (knowing)...

good morning today is day 7

of my lenten project.

it is also tuesday, march 5, 2013.

i want to welcome you.

(mamaw and grandmommie)

where my grandmommie was instrumental

in developing my Christian beliefs and values at a very early age,

my mamaw was instrumental in bringing me

to God when i was a young woman.

~@~

the fact that it was my mamaw

who brought about my relationship 

with God might be surprising...

as

she was not a church goer.

actually, the only two times

i recall her ever setting foot

in a church

were when i got married

and

when katherine was baptized.

that being said,

i never doubted she believed.

(i knew when she was growing up

she had gone to church

with her mother.) 

however, i never really thought about it.

as i found it very normal for Christians

to abstain from talking about their faith.

~@~

on my 

my life on the lane

blog,

i wrote about my relationship

with my mamaw.

sometimes it seems like it was just yesterday that i lost her and can hardly breathe... other times it seems like she's been gone forever, and i miss her like crazy... and then at times it seems like she was just a most wonderful dream God sent to me one night.

i know all grandmothers are special; my grandmommie meant the world to me as well!!!

but, there was this one time when i was 16 that i realized what i meant to my mamaw and what she meant to me. i was hospitalized; and i guess i had fallen asleep with my mom in the room. while i was sleeping my mamaw came in to my room to see me.

i remember awakening; but mom and mamaw didn't know i was awake. i overheard my mamaw, through tears, tell my mom that if something happened to me and i died, she wanted to die too. she didn't want to live in this world without me...

i pretended to be asleep as tears rolled out of the sides of my closed eyes. at the same time that my heart was breaking because she was afraid of losing me, it was also singing. i always knew my mamaw loved me... i even knew that she loved me to the moon and back (and the love was mutual). but, to hear her say that she literally loved me more than her own very precious life... there are no words that i could type right now that could even touch the kind of blessed i felt.

mamaw lived to see me graduate high school and college, me get married, me give birth to katherine, and katherine start pre-school... and then on a night in late august, 1997, she flew to heaven.

to this day i believe she made sure that God would show me the love He had for me to fill that huge void her leaving me left. and He did. He let me grieve and then He came and showered me with the same unconditional love i had known from her. i have been totally blessed since then and very at peace that she is in a good place with the One that can love her the same way i did until i can be with her again.

~@~

you may wonder HOW i KNOW

she is with GOD...

one of the first

signs HE ever sent me,

he sent me the day we entombed

mamaw.

i asked HIM to let me know

she was with HIM...

to send me a sign.

hence, when we returned

from the cemetery,

i remained on the deck;

i sat down to gather my thoughts.

when i did

i happened to glance over at

a flat of geraniums i had never planted.

the whole flat had been dried up (dead)

for two months or longer.

i just hadn't taken the time

to discard them.

well, the whole flat had come to life.

the leaves were green,

and the flowers were in full bloom!!!

i sat there with the warm sun

on my face

and with a soft breeze in my hair...

knowing... 

my.prayer.had.been.answered.

~@~

"they were convinced by the power of miraculous signs and wonders and by the power of God's Spirit. in this way, i have fully presented the good news of Christ from jerusalem all the way to illyricum." (romans 15:19) love and God's blessings, dani xxx