My grandmother’s house was my favorite place in the
entire world. She lived in a small house which had only four rooms. Three of the
rooms served as bedroom-living room combinations, and the fourth was the kitchen. She did not have running water in her house to the day she died; and until I was a teenager, she
cooked on a wood stove which meant someone had to bring in wood for it. Hers was a happy, welcoming house though; and
on weekends, there was usually a crowd of relatives visiting her. Most of the time, it was a fun place for a child to be and for me, it was always home.
I loved my grandmother dearly, and she taught me a lot about
Jesus, about remembering and practicing the Golden Rule, and about being a good
person. I never doubted that she loved
me too, and she would often take up for me when my mother was being especially
strict—which was usually the case. For
example, once, when my mother was giving me a hard time about eating a second hot-dog that I had asked for but suddenly felt too full to eat, I felt my grandmother,
who was sitting beside me, nudge my leg. When I looked down, I saw her hand
turned up signaling for me to give her the hot-dog. After I had quickly given it to her, she ate that hot-dog without my mother ever knowing what my grandmother had done. That day she was not only my
champion, but she was also my partner in crime!!
I adored my cousins, Pat and Evelyn, and loved to be with
them too. But a girl who lived across
the road and down a piece from their house could always manage to annoy me when
she came to play. She liked to brag that she would be a movie star someday and; maybe I was jealous, but I really didn't like
her. One sunny morning, when I was home
from school, my grandmother told me to go over to this girl's house to play. I
told my grandmother I didn't want to play with her. When she asked me why, I shocked her by replying truthfully, “She’s ugly.
She’s too ugly to play with!”
Grandma didn't spank me, but she lectured me about judging others, made
me sit in a chair in the yard for what seemed like half a day, and meditate on
the thought: "Pretty is as Pretty does." (I still remember the purple verbena and
the snapdragons planted near my chair!)
When I finally assured her that I would never, ever, say someone was
ugly again, she let me go to play.
In
truth, knowing I had disappointed my grandmother by showing her I
wasn't the girl she expected me to be was worse than having to sit in that chair
while the other children were playing. Sixty
two years later I still remember the lesson I learned that day,and I easily recognize
those girls who are my grandmother’s kind of girls---the ones who are “pretty
is as pretty does.”
1 Samuel 16:8 “Truly,
God does not see what man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but
the LORD sees the heart."
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