Dynamite in Small Packages

Today is my Grandma Na's birthday, and I really want to write a blog about her, being as she is so tech savvy and I'm sure she'd get right on here and read it... but I'm sitting here and nothing sounds right.  I've typed three paragraphs and erased all three... and just can't get it.  Don't you love it when that happens? 

How do you process 33 years of memories of a little lady that is just like the saying "Dynamite comes in small packages?" She's done a lot of living in her 82 years, that's for sure.  Wonder how many hymns she's played on the piano? How many puppies and kitty cats she's fed, and how many times she's said, "Don't take your shoes off.  There's too much dog hair on the carpet?"

How many times she's rocked with grandkids on the swing, counting the cars that went by?  How many loads of laundry she's packed up and down those basement stairs?  How many fried apple pies and homemade biscuits and gravy she's made?

How many switches she's cut... and threats she's made?  How many times she's leaned up into grandsons taller than her to get hugs?  How many graduations and weddings she's attended for her 6 kids and 10 grandkids, with more to come? 

Picnics at Natural Bridge, and trips to Cherokee, North Carolina and Gatlinburg, Tennessee with youth groups... lunches at Pizza Hut with the whole crew or breakfast at McDonalds with Landry?

I've sat on her couch when I've been mean, slept on her couch and drank Sprite or 7-Up when I've been sick.  I've worn her high heels and hid in her closet and rolled out those pies at her table when I was stressed out in nursing school.

How many prayers she's offered up, for me, for Wallace (her favorite for sure), for people I don't even know... my Grandma is a saint.  Most of the time.  She's also spunky. She and my grandpa have shown me that love really can last and that it can be good and great... if God is in the center of it.  63 years does something...

Over the years, we've grown..a  wall had to be knocked down... the piano moved.  Pugsley and Butch and Ralphie died, but Jill gets fried bologna for lunch just like a grandchild, and the same pictures are up in the hallway now as when I was little.

And that small package still gives pretty good hugs, even if she lets Caleb and Dylan and Mason and Landry by with more than me and Jen and Glenn ever imagined. Happy Birthday, Mamaw Na!  And as you said today, "Hope this one does you for at least 10 more years."