Witness of Grace

Welcome!

One of my favorite phrases from the New Testament is "so great a cloud of witnesses", from the letter to the Hebrews. As I was converting some treasured family VHS tapes to DVDs recently, I began to think about the kinds of witnesses that have appeared in my life. What better way to comment on them and perhaps to share some of the insights from them than to start a blog?

My thoughts will be wide-ranging, to be sure, because I have, now that I think of it, lived a long life already and have heard and seen witnesses of all types. You, dear readers, may expect comments about faith, family, friends, art, architecture, music, literature, gardening, travel, storytelling, history, and nature. I will enjoy sharing whatever wisdom has come to me from my own great cloud of witnesses.

As it is my Aunt Grace's 88th birthday today, let me just share some thoughts about her. First of all, she is a survivor of three types of cancer, all within the last 15 years. That is a staggering witness in and of itself. She has the most positive attitude and has coped with surgeries and alopecia and gradually diminishing mobility. Nonetheless, she and my Uncle Bob still regularly visit local restaurants, go to the latest movies (she is way ahead of me on that!), enjoy social gatherings with friends, and travel. She never complains to us, never falls prey to hopelessness, and never exhibits a "why me?" response to all of these challenges. What a witness to the power of love and hope! Talking to her today, I learned that she's recently been doing one of the "Great Courses", using CDs, to brush up on the Latin she studied in high school. Soon she'll be doing a course on music theory. She puts me to shame!

What else has she taught me? She has lived her name so beautifully: grace. As a Navy wife, she moved frequently, managing long deployments of my uncle with patience and strength. She always seemed to look for the interesting and positive features of each new city, and her friends are legion. She kept a welcoming and lovely home at every stop, and even today is hospitality itself, despite her physical challenges. Perhaps the roughest part of her life was the birth and death of her second child, my cousin George. He lived only a few months. I know from my own experience how this shatters a mother. Yet my aunt picked up the pieces and showed us how to move through the valley of the shadow. I drew on her witness when my own daughter died shortly after birth.

Aren't I blessed with such an aunt? And hasn't her life borne witness to her faith? I have a high standard to emulate.