An early saint in my life

Does it ever cross your mind how many saints and ‘angels’ God actually sent during your childhood? Looking back, He sent quite a few to me. Thank you, Lord God, for each one. You sent them when I needed them. I cannot thank You enough! My childhood would have been poorer without them.

One of the early ones was my Gram, my dad’s mom. She died on my ninth birthday and it was the first and only time I saw my dad cry. Gram loved me with a completely open-hearted love. I’ve never forgotten how she made me feel so loved, so special, so valued, and I know she’s been praying for all of us since she arrived in heaven.

Another was a woman named Aunt Molly, though she wasn’t related except in the heart. She was a teacher and she loved her vocation. Aunt Molly was never my teacher because I was in Grade Three when we moved in next door, but she did become my friend. Aunt Molly taught Grade One. She adopted the children (and parents) from next door as if she were our grandmother. In 1978, she and I went to Jasper together for the last long weekend before university began. Seventy-six-year-old Aunt Molly and twenty-three-year-old me had a terrific vacation together in the mountains and never ran out of things to say to each other.

Devout Anglican that she was, she did not mind at all when I confessed that I had left my Anglican roots to become a Roman Catholic the previous year. She told me that she was simply happy that I had a relationship with Jesus Christ… it did not matter to her where I had found it. She prayed for me daily. She was my husband’s main support while I spent two months in the hospital with acute pancreatitis in 1995. She often said that she wondered why God was keeping her alive… I know it was to help my husband during my illness. No one else seemed to know that he needed support except Aunt Molly. God bless you for that and everything else, Aunt Molly… I still miss you. From that day in 1978 when she said yes to the trip to Jasper until she died in 1996, Aunt Molly was one of my closest friends. Here was the another woman God had sent into my life to accept me exactly as I was!

My Grade Five teacher, Mrs. G., was another of God’s messengers in my life. She walked with me and encouraged me one day at recess, listening to my heartaches, and reassuring me that I would be okay. Mrs. G.’s husband worked with my dad, yet she really cared about me anyway. I was having a hard time in that school — being accelerated a grade at the same time I was the ‘new kid’ was hard, plus I got my first pair of (ugly) glasses. Brainy, new to the school, and glasses — the perfect recipe for being different–the kiss of death in a school. Plus being the eldest of now six kids at home, I felt I was valued only for the help I could give my mom. I later learned that this was also the time my dad started to suffer from bipolar depression… but all I knew then was my parents had little time for me.

Thank you, dear Lord, for recognizing my struggles. I’m spending a lifetime trying to sort them out and understand them, to forgive those who have hurt me (often without knowing it), and to love better those saints and ‘angels’ who accompany me now. With your grace, I can do it more like you would! Please bless all those who have walked on this journey with me…