Passing Down the Fatherhood Mantel
We’ve sailed past Father’s Day on our calendars. Some, like me, remembered fondly those blood lines that brought physical life. Others tried to forget, and still others celebrated men tha...
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Grandparenting & Generations
56 articles gathered under this theme.
Unprompted Words From the Heart
“I love you, Grandpa and Grandma,” my twenty-year-old grandson said before he ended our phone conversation. He is about to turn the ripe old age of twenty-one and will be married in less...
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Learning to Laugh Again
A notice comes on my phone. A picture of my great-grandson pops up. I open the app and find a video of his mommy talking to him, leaning over his little tummy and digging her head into hi...
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A Christmas Search for Jesus
Every year for the last five years my three youngest grandchildren have come to our house in December for Starry Night. The idea birthed in 2020 when the “Christmas Star” appeared. It was...
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Are You Really The Best?
I found the crayon-drawn picture lying on a chair, during my hurry-and-pick-up-the-house-cleaning. Time tightened before guests arrived, and the house reflected the chaos of muddy shoes a...
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How Do I See Others?
I tilted my head a bit to look for myself in his stick figure drawing. I wondered is this truly how he saw me? “Is that me?” I asked. He nodded. He held a felt tip marker in a small hand...
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Set Apart To Be A Blessing
Pacing from streetlight to streetlight, with my phone pressed hard against my ear, I wore a circled path on the asphalt. My head down, my feet entered the illumined cone shaped area on th...
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Call Me Sis Again
“Hey Sis,” she said to get my attention in the store. She was more than double my age with white hair. She looked like my grandma. “Mom,” I hissed, “don’t call me Sis,” I always wanted a...
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A Pivot in Time Marks Eternity
His eyes lighted when he saw me walking toward him in the crowd. My grandson headed straight toward me with a smile, and sidled up against my side. He stretched his arms around me and squ...
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What Do You Do?
Somewhere in the middle of dodge ball tag and baking cookies with three grandsons, my youngest grandson cocked his head to the side and asked, “So Grandma, what do you two do here all day...
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A Baby Brings Hope And A Future
Mornings have always been a process for me, like pulling me out of a deep well where my feet are sucked by muddy weights of dreams. Greeting each new day takes time and a dose of courage...
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The Reward of Achievement
If you were to walk the streets of Bologna, Italy during a spattering of months out of the year, you might see a confusing sight. Now and again whether in a crowd or walking alone, amid A...
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Are You Running Well?
I have some dear friends, whom I love very much even though they run. I mean really run. On purpose. Because they like it. They have a few years up on me, yet they are forever completing...
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God Moves Behind the Scenes
We all have them, markers of good and bad in our lives. April marks our spot. It’s another anniversary of when life altered through our daughter’s illness. I often wish I could box up our...
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Do People See Who You Really Are?
“Is that your son?” I asked pointing to the little guy who had just scored on my grandson’s soccer team. Strangers to one another, we’d been standing side by side echoing with the same gr...
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The Best Kind Of Love
His little fingers dripped with orange greasy pizza oil and stuck together with chocolate fudge-vanilla. I checked his face and found it wreathed with those same streaks of orange and bla...
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What does satisfaction look like to you?
“That was so satisfying,” my grandson said. Surprised, I wondered, “Where did that came from?” He had just fished out a slippery shard of thin ice from a puddle. It lay shattered like gla...
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How Do You See People?
I tilt my head a bit to look for myself in his stick figure drawing. I wonder is this truly how he sees me? He waits. “Is that me?” I ask. Pen in hand, like Picasso, he nods. Proudly. Ser...
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What Appetite Are You Feeding?
My grandsons are going through the picky eating stage. I’ve watched all fourteen grandchildren hit it along the way, and it never fails to bring back memories of my own children’s fussy e...
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If Jesus Wanted To
“If Jesus wanted to,” my little seven-year-old fellow classmate declared, “He could flatten my thumb and make it big enough to go around the whole world.” He held his thumb inches from my...
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Where Do Your Tracks Lead?
One of my missionary colleagues gave me an illustration of life in the jungle. It held a punch that I hope I never forget. South American roads at times are little more than frequently tr...
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Prayer Leaves An Eternal Legacy
On the farm, after dark meant black. The only light, other than the stars, shone from a tall pole smack in the middle of the yard. I ran from the gray shed to the house like lightening, s...
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What Do You See?
Our refrigerator died. Second fridge demise in six months. The next week my computer met its maker. It went like an apple with a bite out of it. Sometimes life is like that. “Grandma,” my...
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A Light to My Path
When the sun streams into my kitchen window, it cheers my soul. Everything literally seems brighter. Its brilliance however, illuminates more than just the room. Particles of dust flicker...
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It's Not Fair
So, my grandson who is four years old beat me at a game of memory. There are a lot of reasons this happened. The cards, for example had some sort of out of this world superpower heroes. I...
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Pondering What Are The Chances?
This morning I chanced to look out my bedroom window. Water splashed up from the little “pond” in our back yard, as if a fish slapped its surface. A water feature which worked once upon a...
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Where to Set Our Attention in an Attention Shifting World
Thor belongs to four of my grandchildren. He is a Vizsla with a beautiful brown coat and liquid brown eyes which clearly speak dog-beg. He knows exactly how to sit at your feet and patien...
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Sometimes There's Creep
It wasn’t unusual to hear our house creak, but the distinct soft footsteps on the staircase made my scalp tingle. I stood quietly inside my bedroom on the second floor, then creeped to th...
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How Well Do You Know Me?
It’s a routine day at Grandpa and Grandma’s. A brightly colored skyscraper of towering Duplo blocks decorates the middle of the living room. Grandpa has taken time off from his Foot-a-eat...
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It’s Back to School and God Is Still Faithful
A bit of a ruckus in Aisle Four grabs my attention. Stacks of bright notebooks and bins of colored pens separate me from a young father trying desperately to check off the teacher’s list...
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What’s in Your Suitcase? - Three Treasures to Pack and Three Attitudes to Leave Behind
Do you go on vacation with more than just what’s in your suitcase? This week you’ll find me at https://www.jeanniewaters.com/blog/. Today it’s my privilege to be Jeannie’s guest blogger....
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Grandparents Day And The Grandparent I Never Knew
“Gamma!” my little grandson shouts. He begins his own personal happy dance with one chubby knee up first, then a big hop on one leg and a galloping pivot that nearly knocks him flat. Thos...
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Who is in Control Of Generations?
“He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children,” Ps. 78:5 ESV “Who’s in control here?” I asked the mirror mi...
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What’s Wrong With Grandpa?
When I think of my grandchildren, there is a sweet glow in my mind of happy holding-on-the-lap book reading, coloring pictures together or baking cookies. Quiet blissfulness. Togetherness...
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Covid Fear is Also Affecting Our Children
Featured recently at Just18Summers.com "It was a Facetime call. I held it up and saw some of the cutest little faces looking at me. “Grandma!” My five-year-old grandson and his three-year...
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What impact will my life have in the future
My husband has a carpenter’s chalk line. He rolls it out, squints down its straight line and lifts it slightly between thick fingers, then lets it snap. It leaves a distinct chalk line ma...
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I Never Thought of It Like That
It was the usual mayhem of opened plastic totes, lids tossed aside and Christmas decor spilling onto the floor. A just decorated tree and mantel already changed the entire look of the roo...
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Storing Ahead
Our first child cried a lot. Understatement. New mom terror of that piercing cry and the absolute certainty it brought reinforced my insecurity. I had no idea what I was doing. In the rar...
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Getting Out of the "Every-Day-is-Labor-Day" Cycle
“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28-30 NKJV) Typically on the farm, Labor Day meant a day to labor, another of many laboring days...
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What’s Hiding in the Window of your Soul?
Recently our family, kids, spouses and grandkids got together at an airbnb for three days of togetherness. It took the form of lots of games, food, and hours of conversation. Kids ran thr...
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Where Do the Prayers of a Mom Go?
“No rest for the weary,” mom sighed. She bent down to pick up muddy boots and move them off the kitchen floor where they lay on their rubber sides, shells without spirits. She carried the...
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Echoes of Babies Never Heard
“Mamma, where are you?” I hear it in my thoughts like light feather snow around me. It drops into my silence and stirs memory sticky and sweet, of little hands that cup my face and turn m...
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When Mom called me "Sis"
“Hey Sis,” she said to get my attention in the store. She was more than double my age with white hair. She looked like my grandma. “Mom,” I hissed, “don’t call me Sis,” I always wanted a...
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Building A Family Legacy One Bedtime Story At A Time
I was transported. Seriously. When our kids were small we always read a Bible story before they went to sleep. Sometimes we read different books first, but the last story they could alway...
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Guest Blog at 936 Pennies: Dear Weary Mama, Look Beyond
“How did you do it?” my daughter asks with an exasperated sigh, the kind that expires like a thin whisper from her soul. She is weary, and the noise level is high. She plops down next to...
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24 Days to Christmas: Ancient of Days
God is always on time, yet I often wonder why He waits so long. I tilt the scissor's blade against the length of bright red ribbon. Curls slither through my fingers in tiny ringlets where...
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Recalibrating Life
Generations, like peanut butter and jelly, are layered lavishly one upon another at the tables. Like a train of blessing, bowls with steam rising and platters overflowing, pass from big h...
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Lovingkindness
Lovingkindness. I linger over the word like a morning cappuccino. I lean my head back, close my eyes, and savor it. “Let me hear Your lovingkindness in the morning; for I trust in You” (P...
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Generations: God's Legacy
The car doors slam, and we slide into opposite sides. We look at one another, then sit silently and think over the last hour. The question comes again: “Will we be like that?” As our car...
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That Time
It may be that Christmases have sped up, maybe they really do come more often, or possibly it’s time warp of aging, but it is that time of the year again. I have a billion things to do, a...
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Are You Listening?
Hot tiny hands warm both sides of my cheeks, smooth and just a little bit forceful. They pull my face upward from where I sit engrossed in my screen so our eyes are even. Hers, translucen...
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Eyes Everywhere
My pocket vibrates a split second after Phil’s buzzes. We both reach for our phones, quick on the draw. Our 16-month-old-grandson has the flu and we are anxious. The text reads, “He is so...
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I can’t be good much longer
When our children were ten, seven and five, we blitzed throughout America for three months on a church-visiting, supporter-reporting, story-telling, home from Italy ministry tour. Our thr...
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Erasing the evidence
I catch her busy little body as it flies by on thin legs and swing her onto my lap. She is the granddaughter of flaxen fairies, fair skin and fierce drama. Her legs pump air like a windmi...
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Asleep with Angels
Assuredly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child…” The air mattress lay like a rubber raft in the middle of the living room, calling me to a short ni...
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God beggar
“I am a God beggar,” I think, looking down into the hopeful eyes of my two-year-old grandson. I reach down and pull the tiny dimpled arms from around my leg, hold his chubby hands in mine...
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