What’s Wrong with Me?
Grandfather paid his bills and didn’t have to bow to anyone.
Here it is the last few days before Christmas. I’m so slow at doing anything I must absolutely begin January first preparing for this date or I won’t be ready. And I’m still late.
This probably sounds horrible, but it is a family trait. My Grandfather was known for being late. At one time we children whispered amongst ourselves it was such a habit, bless his heart “he’ll be late for his own funeral.”
And this sounds even more horrible, but bless his heart, he was late. He had been in a nursing home for a few months two hundred plus miles from where he had lived for the last forty years of his life. He was to be brought home for burial. We had all assembled at the cemetery gravesite waiting, and his hearse finally came winding its way across the countryside.
I don’t believe that part is on our family crest, but perhaps it is and I can’t read it. My daughter has a habit of being fashionably late, but for most of us her fashionably late is just annoying…she’s usually later than the rest of us. Which may be why it’s annoying (laughing here).
On my Adorable cousin’s side of the family, they have an “Effie and Frank” award. I did not know about Effie and Frank always being late, but that side of my family has older cousins in it and therefore they are more knowledgeable about this feature.
Their award is a picture of (of all people) Effie and Frank, who were my Grandmother’s sister (Aunt Effie) and Effie’s husband Uncle Frank. When my cousins have a family get together if you’re the last one up the drive, you get ‘the award’.
My Grandmother came from a large rather well off family—at least until her mother died. But that’s another story…
My remembrance of the infamous Effie and Frank pair was when they came out on a Sunday to lord it over the poor sister and her farmer husband. Of course, Grandmother probably did feel a bit of the rub, but I doubt my Grandfather ever did. Grandfather paid his bills and didn’t have to bow to anyone.
I somewhat understand both sides of that. When my sister asked me why I’d like to have my ‘six million dollars’, part of it is the (hopeful) security of never ‘running out’ that a person could have but—
As I told a daughter-in-law once eons ago, I wouldn’t mind being able to rub snobbery people’s nose in a ‘look what I have’ time. That’s for all the times they’ve been snobs.
No, it doesn’t matter. I know who my God is and from where my blessings, all of my blessings flow. And yes, my Grandfather was right, I pay my bills and am thankful to have that and to be able to help others as well.
And in reality snobs depend on people who they feel are lower on the social scale than they are for their feelings of well-being. When they lose that status their self-worth is lost.
Philippians 4:
11 Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.
12 I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.
13 I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me. 14 Notwithstanding ye have well done, that ye did communicate with my affliction.
