Page 29 of Over the Verdant Hills
Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.
She wasn’t sure why that verse popped into her mind. After all, Grandma wasn’t dead yet. But she was dying. Of that there was no doubt.
“Claire?” She heard a soft rap on her door, and then her grandma’s voice again. “Claire?”
“Come on in, Grandma,” she said, straightening herself off the bed and wiping the tears off her face. She was angry at Josiah because he knew. He knew, and he hadn’t told her. That made her so mad she wanted to grab a hold of his neck and just shake it. And she wasn’t usually prone to violence.
“Oh, sweetheart,” her grandma said, out of breath from climbing the stairs and tottering a bit even with her cane.
“I’m sorry you had to climb the stairs. You really didn’t have to come up. I was going to come down as soon as Josiah left.”
“He’s gone, but… I did want to talk to you about that.”
“Grandma. He didn’t tell me that you were sick! You didn’t tell me. Don’t you know that I would want to know that?”
“And don’t you know that you were already going through so much? I wanted to protect you. You are my granddaughter. I love you.”
“I love you too. And I want to know when there’s something wrong.” She paused, then tilted her head. “Don’t you want to know when there’s something wrong with me?”
Grandma’s gnarled hand slid across the bedspread—one she had made with her own fingers, those same fingers, more than two decades ago. Claire remembered Grandma sitting in her chair that summer, quilting as her grandchildren played around her, coming and going. She was a teenager at the time, and she’d stopped, eaten cookies anddrunk tea and talked to her grandma, and then run off again with her friends.
She couldn’t quite remember, but that was probably a couple of summers after she’d kissed Josiah.
“Of course I do. I didn’t want… I was going to tell you. I didn’t really want to keep it away from you, but I wanted you to get settled some, get a support system around you. Have you made any friends yet since you’ve come back?”
“I talked to Grace this morning.”
“There. Grace will be good for you. See? If I’d told you earlier, you wouldn’t know Grace was back.”
She didn’t want to argue with her grandma, so she just kept her mouth closed. “Josiah should have told me. I went to him about your bruises, I talked to him. He pretended he didn’t know anything.”
Grandma was quiet for a moment, just softly stroking Claire’s hand, and then she said, “I think that one of the best things a Christian can do is determine that no matter what someone does to them, they are not going to get offended over it. They’re just going to let all the hard things slide off their backs.”
“What person can do that?” Claire said without even thinking about it.
“Well, with the spirit of the Lord, we can. Because after all, Christ Himself commanded us to be kind to those who persecute us. We are commanded to not just not get offended—we’re supposed to be kind. And I think you’ll find if you practice that, your life gets a lot easier and less stressful if you’re not constantly being upset over what someone else might have done, might’ve said, or might have that you want. Just determine that you’re not going to get upset.”
She stared at her grandma. The idea was novel. Not get upset? But immediately she could see the advantages. After all, she’d just been miserable for how long? And before that, for almost an entire year she’d been offended and upset over what her husband had done. What if she just hadn’t gotten upset? What if she had just given it to God, which she’d been thinking about before, and not worried about it? The idea was not completely novel, but it was utterly intriguing. Because shewanted to live a life of calmness and peace, the way her grandmother seemed to have.
“Is that your secret?”
Grandma smiled. “It might be one of them. But I don’t think it’s a secret. If it is, I’m sharing it with you now.”
Claire smiled. “You know I’m not going to be able to do this overnight, right?”
“Of course not. I didn’t do it overnight either. It was a lifetime of deciding that no matter what people did to me, I wasn’t going to get upset with them. I was unsuccessful most of the time at first, but the more I determined that I wanted to be like Jesus—kind, compassionate, levelheaded even when the Pharisees were constantly trying to trip Him up—the better I got at it. And the happier my life was. It’s funny how happy you are when you’re not busy getting upset with people.”
“So I can get upset with situations?” Claire was mostly teasing, because she was pretty sure her grandma was talking about people and situations.
“Your life will be a lot happier, a lot easier, a lot less stressful, if you just give it to God. Just admit that it’s in God’s hands, and He’s going to do what He wants to, and it’s going to be the best for you.”
“I just can’t see how losing you could be best for me. Or best for my children. We’ll miss you.”
“I’ll live on. You’ll make sure that I do. In fact, you might remember the things that I said even better when I’m not around to state them anymore.” Her grandma chuckled a little and continued to stroke her hand.
Claire couldn’t find that funny, even though she wanted to laugh.
“Now, I’m not telling you what you need to do with Josiah, but you know he was between a rock and a hard place. He knew that if I’d wanted you to know, I would have told you. He also knew that you would want to know. So he had to make a choice. And he chose to honor the trust that I had placed in him when I’d asked him to take me to the doctor’s.”
