Lessons from Grandma Frizzy

I remember when I first walked into her room. The room had the medicinal smell of a nursing home. She sat in an arm chair small and frail but with an aurora of peace about her. I was a teenager and had volunteered to adopt a grandmother. I was assigned to Grandma Frizzy.

Through out my life I had been around older people partly because the church I attended met in a nursing home. I had learn many things from my encounters with those who had a lot more life experiences. Some lessons were very simple like how to thread a needle. Many times the lessons were about history or about the different countries they had come from. The lesson Grandma Frizzy taught me was how to deal with depression.

Looking back I realize my time with her was very short but the lesson she taught me deeply impacted my life. She would sit in her arm chair and I would pull up a chair beside her. Then she would begin to share her life with me. Hers was not an easy life but she was a woman of great faith and she shared with me how to be sure of what you hope for and confident about what you don't see.

One day she told me how she would offer to God the sacrifice of praise. She told me about a particularly difficult time in her life. She was suffering from a deep sadness when she read in Hebrews 13:15 Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledges his name. She told me that when she began to praise God the sadness lifted and her heart was filled with joy.

After I left her I that day I continued to think about what she said. I often suffered from depression and was determined try what Grandma Frizzy had suggested. My first reaction was,"No wonder they call it a sacrifice!" I found that when I was feeling sad or depressed the last thing I wanted to do was to offer God praise and yet as I determined to do just that something happened . The chains of depression would begin to loosen their grip on me.

 The aurora of peace I had felt when I first met her had nothing to do with her circumstances and everything to do with her faith. Hebrews 11 tells us that faith is being sure of what you hope for and confident about what you don't see. She taught me that by faith I could praise God regardless of  my emotional state.

I am a grandmother now and these are the lessons I want to teach my grandchildren, how to walk by faith and offer the sacrifice of praise.