Sunday 16 November 2008

My nanan... another story about my hero.

Just a short story about my nanan who died in May this year. She was someone with a simple and strong faith, not based on deep theological knowledge but on a love of Jesus, a Saviour who has proved himself true to her.

Nanan had Alzheimer's disease - something that robbed her of so much. It made me so angry to see her deteriorate and I hated seeing her suffer. However, something my grandad told me gave me hope and showed me that her faith was her strength and backbone...

Nanan had to have regular assessments by a psychiatrist and one day when she went she was having one of her 'bad days'. These were days when she couldn't remember the most basic of things -a the day, names of relatives, the prime minister etc. When she got like this she would get very agitated and angry and my grandad would often bear the brunt. The doctor asked her to go over to the desk in the office and just write down the first thing that came into her head. She went over to the desk and sat down. A couple of minutes later she looked up at my grandad and the doctor and said "I've done it." When the doctor went and picked up the paper, he read what she had written. On the paper it simply said "God is love."

How amazing but what a hope.

Even when my nanan couldn't remember the name of the man she had been married to for 60 years, God and his love never left her. When she was in hospital she loved to sing hymns - the words or at least the tunes ingrained in her heart. Her faith and her love of God were her priority - everything else, the stuff that 'passes away' came second. That is not to take anything away from how much she loved my grandad, it's just that everything she was came out of her relationship and walk with Jesus. Because of her love of Jesus, she was the best wife, mother, daughter, sister and nanan and we miss her.