Sweet Sounds From Heaven

Do you have a grandma? This is not a trick question, but let me help you with it. If you have a belly button, you do. Neither is it the chicken or the egg dilemma, grandmas came first. There’s just something about grandmas. They are grandmas because they are so grand. Little Red Riding Hood had it right from the start. Going to grandma’s house was always met with such anticipation.

My grandma and I were roommates for about 25 years. Either I lived with her or she lived with me. We were very close. I could tell her anything and she would not act surprised, she would give me wisdom on the situation every time. That’s why older people are so valuable. They truly do have the tee shirt on wisdom and It was my good fortune to be around this older, wiser woman a lot.

Grandma always told me to do unto others as I would have them do unto me. As much as that was understood, it was taken to heart and applied in my life.  One day while cadillacing through the Bible, in the Book of James it read, “If you fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, ye do well.” I gasped and put my hands over my mouth and said, “Dear Lord! God’s quoting my grandma.”  But then my brain returned. That had been taught to me all my life. It did not dawn on me that grandma got it from the Bible. Probably the reason it stuck, that powerful WORD OF GOD.

We all know you can’t get born again again, and my heart was given to Jesus at about 12 years old. My memory is very clear on the event and I was as serious as all get out too. We don’t always understand eveything.  I lost my zeal.  It seemed that I leaked, because when God got my attention 21 years later, He sowed me up and filled me up again with His Love. Grandma was the first person notified. She was so thrilled. She never gave up on me, everyone else certainly had. Thank You Jesus for grandma’s prayers.

Whenever pondering whether to purchase something or give something away, and debating because of the money involved, grandma always helped me. She’d say something like “Sandra, you’ll never miss it in a million years.” I’d think about that and it’s true. Really helped me put a lot of stuff in it’s proper perspective. Helped me really get it. Life is short and death is long. We only have one shot at this thing called life, and I was trying to get it right.

We were raised Baptist. We were Baptist born, Baptist breed, Baptist living and Baptist dead. When God got my attention in 1978, He connected me with a small non-denominational church. Jesus came alive to me in those stories in the Bible like He never had before. I just believed more and expected more. It was exciting. I went to Virginia and brought grandma home with me just about every Fall and took her back home every Spring. This was the first time with grandma since my new found faith. She really sensed a big difference in me. She was right. I couldn’t explain or even understand, but things were so different. So much better.

One Thursday night grandma wanted to go with me to church. Tickled me. She said she wanted prayer for healing. We trucked off to church. At the end of the service, an alter call was made for anything needed. Grandma stepped up for prayer for healing. Richard anointed grandma with oil and prayed for her. She received her healing, and received the infilling of the Holy Spirit and received her prayer language. What a night that was. When we started home, we started laughing and could not stop. Grandma was kind of heavy and we rocked that little VW Bug all the way home. We just could not stop laughing. Every time we would look at each other, we would laugh uncontrollably. God is so Good.

The last time I took grandma home was 1988. She had several strokes and was thereafter unable to come to Florida to spend winters with me. Her health was declining, but I was praying. She was in the hospital and family kept calling me to come if I wanted to see her alive. It would go in one ear and out the other.  Finally, Teresa called and said, “Sandy, honey I know you are praying and believing God to heal grandma, but if you want to see her alive, you probably should come on up.” I could hardly stand it, but I decided to catch a flight.

Linda picked me up at the airport in Tri-Cities around 6:00pm. We traveled to Abingdon where grandma was hospitalized. All the family were there and had been there for days. They told me to go on in and spend time with grandma, they had all been spending time with her already.

Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw. I was almost too late. All I could do was rub grandma’s arm and cry and tell her how much she meant to me. She had machines and tubes everywhere and struggled to breathe. A nurse came in to turn her, and still clinging to hope, I asked him, if she was getting any better. He looked at me like I was a moron, the final straw.

I composed myself and went out and retrieved my Bible and returned to grandma’s bedside. This time I went around on the other side of the bed since she was facing in that direction. I said, “grandma, you want me to read to you from the Bible?” I opened my Bible to St. John 14 and started reading in the first verse. Let not your heart be troubled, ye believe in God, believe also in me. In My Father’s house are many mansions, if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you, and grandma breathed her final breath and went home.

It was hard, but not on her. She was free. I just had to cling to “O death where is thy sting. O grave, where is thy victory?” I Cor 15:55, and I did. Grandma waited for me to come before she went home.

If I could sum up my life with grandma, it would be laughter and wonderful fellowship. If she ever taught me one thing over another, it would be to Love God and Forgive People. And there are also many other things which grandma taught me, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Needless to say, she was way up there on my hero list.

Filed under: True God Stories