Women are strong creatures.  God made us with a strength that is so much different than the strength He’s given to men.  Today, I want to celebrate that strength by introducing you to one of the strongest women I know.

Do you recognize this picture?  Possibly from all of my unnecessary posts on the messiness of my desk?  Well, today I want to introduce you to that beautiful woman in the frame.  She is my Grandma, Madeline.  The above picture was taken when my Grandma was still a teenager, living on the farm in Missouri and attending a sort-of dance/Prom at school.

Don’t you like how I took a picture of a picture?  It’s so much easier than taking apart the frame and scanning the picture and putting it back together.  This a picture of my Grandma in her early twenties as a nurse.  This is probably my favorite picture of her.  I imagine her to be like Evelyn in Pearl Harbor (one of my favorite movies of all time).  So classy, so elegant with her black hair and deep green eyes.  Golly, if I could live in another decade, it’d definitely be the forties.  Definitely.  Their fashion, their hair, their red lipstick.  Anyway….

My Grandpa was a soldier in the army during World War II.  When he came home, he had surgery to remove his wisdom teeth.  My Grandma was the nurse.  They fell in love immediately and married not long after.

This is probably my favorite picture of my Grandparents.  I love the look on my Grandpa’s face.  It’s evidence of how happy he was to have married the love of his life — and she was.  They adored each other.  They definitely had their ups and downs, but what marriage doesn’t have that?  My Grandma, looking as stunning as ever, is looking at something out of the corner of her eyes.  I wish I knew what.

My Grandparents, a couple of very good Catholics,  wasted no time starting a family.  Their first daughter was born less than a year after they were married.  Pictured above are their first six children.  My Mom is the little baby sitting on my Grandpa’s lap.

Well now, you’ve seen pictures of my Grandma as a nurse, a bride, and a mother — but let me tell you about the strength this woman had.

This slender, glamorous woman had a total of 10 (yes, ten) children.  Like the woman in Proverbs 31, she arose early and rolled up her sleeves, eager to work and care for her children.  My Grandparents didn’t have much money, and what little they did have, was quickly spent on the bare necessities that 10 little children required.  Still, you would never know it by looking at them.  My Grandma can sew like no one I’ve ever met.  Each Christmas and Easter, she would sew perfectly tailored dresses for the girls to wear to Mass.  When my Mom was a teenager and her four younger brothers and sisters were still quite young, my Grandma worked nights as a nurse, to help support the family, while still caring for the children and the household during the day.  She was strong. While my Grandpa knew how to handle a gun, how to fight in a war, how to stay alive when so many of his friends were dying; my Grandma knew how to cook three meals a day for a family of 12 with a limited budget, how to mend their old clothes and sew new clothes, how to keep them healthy and teach them manners and make sure they were where they needed to be on time.  The woman gave birth to ten children — in a day when there was no pain medication for births.

When my Grandparents had raised all of their children and begun having grandchildren, they experienced something wonderfully life-changing.  They were introduced to their LORD and Saviour, Jesus Christ.  Every morning as they ate breakfast, they would pray for each of their 10 children and 20-some grandchildren.  They prayed for our safety, our health, our future spouses – most of all, that we would know Jesus Christ as our LORD and Savior and that’d we’d walk in His ways.

My Grandma lost her best friend when my Grandpa died in 2000.  My Grandma was devastated.  Though the physical distance between us was great, whenever I’d hear from her (usually through letters), she’d always write about her best friend — what a great and wonderful and strong man he was.  Tears were never her stranger.  She missed him terribly.  But, she still kept living.  A few years after his death, she moved – a big step for a woman who’s just lost her husband.  They shared so many memories in that house.  But she knew what she had to do and she arose in strength to do it.  She mows her own lawn.  She works a few days a week as a secretary for the Healing Rooms in her city.  She allows young people who are doing missionary training at her church to live in her house.  She cooks for them.  She has a hunger for God beyond anyone I’ve ever met.  When I talk to her on the phone, she tells me about the time she saw Heidi Baker speak.  She tells me about God’s will to heal us.  She tells me about all the new books she’s reading.  She tells me how much more there is of God, how much we’re still missing out on.  She prays for me.

As I sit now, staring at the picture taken of my Grandma, all those years ago as a nurse, I wonder if she knew what God had planned for her life.  I am almost the same age now that she was in that picture.  Did she know that the dashing, young soldier whose wisdom teeth she removed would become her best friend, her husband, the love of her life?  Did she know she’d have ten children with him?  Was she aware of how much strength rested inside of her?

That beautiful woman is only a fragment of who my Grandma is today.  Yes, her hair isn’t as dark and black as it was.  Her skin isn’t as tight.  Her waist, much to my amazement, is scarcely bigger than it was before she gave birth to those ten children.  She still does dress fashionably.  She still has beautiful, warm green eyes.  But my Grandma is immensely stronger than she was then.  She’s like the woman in Proverbs 31, who “Always faces tomorrow with a smile.  When she speaks she has something worthwhile to say, and she always says it kindly.”  She’s a picture of grace.  She’s loving, she’s tender-hearted, soft-spoken and kind.  But inside of her is deep well of wisdom, an impenetrable strength, an unquenchable hunger for God, an understanding heart that never judges, a rich heart that always puts others first.  She’s faced challenges, hurts and losses.  She’s walked through fire and come out smelling like the sweet fragrance of Jesus.

Grandma, I love you.  If there’s one woman I aspire to be like, it’s you.

Tags: Grandma, Proverbs 31, strong women

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