Great is Thy Faithfulness

This morning I was singing "Great is Thy Faithfulness" while I rocked Asher. I couldn't help but think of my grandmother because my mom always told me that was her favorite hymn.

(interjection here - there is craziness all about me, wild shouting, "My hand is blue! My hand is blue!" "My outfit's orange! My outfit's orange!" "Mom, we did it!" just normal sounds around here. Let me try to gather my thoughts again.....)

As I was saying, (oh someone is bleeding again, just a minute) (okay band aid has been applied with skill and precision.) my grandmother loved that hymn. She was a mother of 5 children, all of whom lived in a single wide mobile home. They were poor. I didn't realize how poor until I was reading my uncle's book, where he describes going to run track, or some such event, at school. He had to run in his socks because they were too poor for shoes. He was horrified that a picture of him running in his socks was caught and published by a newspaper photographer.

I think of my grandmother, rising early in the morning to pray before she had to go of to work to earn money for the family, her husband being too ill to work. I think of her signing about God's faithfulness, knowing that she did not have the money to buy her son new shoes for school, often times wondering where the money for food would come from. I am touched and deeply grateful.

My mother always said of growing up poor that she thought if you had ice cream in your freezer that you were rich. I think by that standard all of her grandchildren are growing up rich. But more that that, I think they are growing up rich in the knowledge of the love and faithfulness of God that their great-grandmother loved to sing about. Because of her prayers and faithfulness generations have been blessed. That is something to be thankful for.

Also, as someone whose only problem with shoes for my children has been how to get them on the correct foot, I am thankful. We have so much. God is faithful and He is generous.