Grandma's Gleanings
Words and Thoughts from Grandma
Sundays are always special days at our local church, but we experienced a stand-out day this fall. Weeks of planning and preparation were invested, along with fervent prayer that God would bless our efforts and receive the glory. Invitations were sent with the hope that new families would take the opportunity to visit, partake in …
This is an update for those of you who may not be aware of the purpose of my daily blogs. I have been burdened for years as to what I could leave behind for my grandchildren and my future great-grandchildren. What could I do so that they would always know how much I love them, …
I took my usual seat in church last week, weary from a busy and burdened week, ready to hear something, anything, to encourage my heart and revive my exhausted spirit. This had been a particularly stressful week, a week when my sleep was deficient, and my own strength was depleted. What would God have for …
How embarrassing! A grown woman, well-advanced in years, standing in the front yard clad in her pj’s, staring up at the sky. Last night was one of those picture-perfect evenings. As I stepped out to attend to my bird feeders, darkness had already blanketed our neighborhood on a perfectly cloudless evening. We reside in …
We had parked our car facing a beautiful reservoir, definitely one of our favorite spots to frequent during our crazy, college courting years. A small, one-room church dotted the landscape, along with a cemetery steeped in history, all surrounded by simple rural peacefulness. How often we had strolled the banks of that lake, dreaming …
An American painter and inventor, Samuel Morse, found the roots of his interest in the field of electricity while a student at Yale University. He would go on to spend twelve years attempting to perfect a working telegraph, during which time he composed his Morse code and secured the financing for the first experimental …
Some days I find myself at a loss for words, literally. As a lingering side-effect of my long bout with Lyme disease, I sometimes lose words. They are common, uncomplicated words, but suddenly and without warning, they are gone, wiped from my memory banks like an eraser sweeping across a chalkboard. Those teeny Lyme …
As a parent, I have experienced this dilemma far too often. The children become hyper-focused on one topic, getting a pet, any pet. Oh, please, not this again! Now the type of pet has run the whole gambit variety-wise: rabbits, hamsters, fish, ferrets (ewww, smelly), crabs (also smelly), stray dogs, and homeless kittens. If …
The nocturnal serenade persisted for months, interrupting the solitude of those quiet, country nightscapes. We looked forward to that sweet lullaby every evening, cracking open the bedroom windows, anticipating the arrival of Hoots, the affectionate (yet not terribly original) name I had given to the owl who had taken up temporary residence in our aging, maple tree. Owls are …
The battle was raging within me; the dreaded deadline was fast approaching. After investing forty-two years of labor behind the wheel of a brown truck, my husband’s pension, our livelihood, was in peril. We had been warned for months of upcoming severe cuts to our income. That hard-earned money was eroding away like sand on a beach succumbing to …