The God who gives, and takes away.

I'm really starting to slack on my blogging, and it isn't for lack of things to talk about..but more a lack of time to type. As Spring starts finding its way onto our porches and into our thinking, I've been here..facing challenges twice my size and recieving blessings greater still.
Let me elaborate.

On the blessings side - I'm not one to make my love life into a big motion picture or anything, but just excuse me for the next few lines.
I'm the luckiest I've ever been with this one. He's changed the way I see relationships, and the way I've expected to be treated in them. He makes me smile, and cares about me with more tolerance and understanding than I've ever handled before. I'm just thankful. Though he's had to deal with a lot from me lately, I'm afraid.

For instance.
In my last post, I believe I mentioned my grandaddy being sick. Well on March the 21st, 2012, my loving grandaddy got to go see Jesus. It was his 82nd birthday. The Sunday before that, I'd been to see him. He couldn't talk, but he kissed my hand and told me all I needed to know. The last audible thing he said to me was "I love you."
He wasn't hurting, and he wasn't scared. He was just tired. The preacher at his funeral said that God calls us home when He sees that our earthly bodies are no longer fit enough to carry our souls. And Lord knows my Grandaddy had a soul four times as big as the body he'd been decreased to, so that may be true.
What had really kept Grandaddy here for this long is his wife, my Grandmama. They'd been married for sixty-one years, and I have never seen such love. They "fought" all the time, but it was really just them being silly. Grandaddy's favorite story to tell was about when he decided he was going to marry Grandmama, and how pretty she was. She'd always just sit on the side of his chair when he went on about it, and shove him when he told her she was still just as pretty now.
The night he died, my daddy and grandmama were with him. Daddy said that grandmama had gone to the bathroom, and while she was in there Grandaddy had stopped breathing a few times. But he didn't go completely until she was back out of the bathroom and holding his hand. I think that didn't just happen.

I hope I get a marriage like that one day.

I miss that man so much. He was such a genuinely kind person, and he never once complained. Not when his legs and arms failed him, not when he couldn't care for himself at all anymore. He was just smiling and trying to make people laugh.

If you pray, send one up for my grandmama. She misses him more than any of us put together, she hasn't had to be apart from him since she was nineteen. She has dementia, so she's confused most of the time. He grounded her, and we're all worried what'll happen since her anchor has gone.

My grandaddy was an elder in the Church for over twenty five years, and he would always end his prayers with "and when our time on earth is done, may You give us a peaceful hour to depart."
And he got his prayer, praise God.

Be thankful, stay hopeful. Don't let the darkness pull you under.
Love,
Anna