Pickin' and Grinning' -- well, pickin' anyway

The photo is poor, but I just had to post it anyway (I tried to change the setting on my camera without my glasses, and picked the wrong one). According to Steven, Anna Maria told him that he would be the perfect husband if he just played the guitar. So he is teaching himself the banjo, which is quite a feat since he has never played a musical instrument before. He's getting pretty good at it, too. Sometimes when I'd go to see the kids, AM would be on the front porch spinning yarn on her spinning wheel and Steven would be picking at the banjo, while the kids romped in the yard.
I snapped this photo of Steven in the house. He's good enough now that the picking took me back to my childhood when Uncle Willy would play the banjo; Uncle Cliffy (which us kids couldn't say and which ended up being Uncle Kicky) would sing, play the autoharp; Uncle Dean played guitar or bass guitar; and Mom played accordion, organ or piano. When Aunt Joyce would come home on furlough she'd join in; she can yodle though she rarely does it anymore, and she can sing and play guitar as well.
This prompted the story I told the granddaughters as we awakened and waited for the sun to warm up the tent enough to go in for breakfast. This is the story as I was told it repeatedly during my childhood in the church where my Grampa, my mom's dad, went. Back before I was born (Grampa died when I was 3 or 4), the church where Grampa attended often had testimony time. And Grampa would stand and tell about how all his children would one day know Jesus. Nobody could quite understand his faith or his determination to believe that, as his kids at that time were living the wild life -- failed marriages, over drinking, smoking....you don't need the details. That's enough.
Even his wife, my gramma, didn't go to church nor want anything to do with it. Nonetheless whenever testimony time came, he'd state that his family would one day know Jesus. As I understand it, Uncle Kicky was the first to find faith. And he even wrote a few hymns or two. He's the one I went to when I was hurting and needed a friend; he always had a fresh word he had just read that morning. And he was the first to publish my writing.
I think it was Aunt Joyce who came to faith next, and she went to Bible college without having finished high school. It took a lot of hard work and lot of remedial work; but not only did she finish, she went on and earned a master's in social work as well. She now serves as a chaplain, primarily working with the American Indians near Phoenix.
I'll never forget when Uncle Dean and Uncle Willy started showing up at Mom's kitchen table with Bibles in their hands. I didn't understand what they had, but I knew I wanted it. They talked about a God of love, a God of hope. Believing I'd someday find that faith, I started reading my Bible--though I didn't understand a bit of it then. Dean now pastors a church, and, until he retired from construction work, he pastored part-time and built bridges during the week. I often wonder what would have happened to me had they ignored the call to faith, as their faith kept me from attempting suicide.
Somewhere in there Mom got her act together, too. And she played organ at church, taught kids in Bible club and Sunday school, and led the choir.
Even my gram found Christ -- I think she was in her 70s or maybe even a bit older. And she changed! Everyone at the nursing home where she spent her last days loved her, thought her the sweetest thing -- this about a woman who had been known for being abusive to her kids. That's basically the way I told the story, except I edited the suicide part as it was kids I was talking to. And then I ended the story with this, "Eliza and Maggie: this is a story you need to remember. It's a founding story of our family. My mom wasn't the best of moms to me, but she did better than her mom. I raised my kids with a lot of regrets, but I did better than my mom. And your mom is an awesome mom. And each of us has done better than our moms because of Grampa's prayers said long before you were even born. That's why praying is so important. Praying doesn't just effect the one you pray for; the prayers move through generation and generation in ways you can't know."
And from there we had one of many granddaughter-grandmom talks with lots of questions and lots of sharing. But that part of the story belongs to the grandchildren and isn't mine to share.