There are days that make it a little better to be alive.  Yesterday was one of those for me.

1.  The new U2 album “No Line On The Horizon” came out.  iTunes began my pre-ordered download at 11:57pm on Monday.  I then sat up until 2am Tuesday listening to it drink in hand in my favorite chair in my low lit office/music room/man cave.  As tired as I was then on Tuesday, it was a GREAT start to the day.

2.  These came from zappos.com.

3.  But, the best part:  Tuesdays is my day to go sit with my Grandfather (Harold, whom I’ve written about in a previous post).  It’s this great time where we just sit and talk about differences in culture, philosophy, theology, church work (he’s a retired minister), and family stories.  Yesterday, was no different.  But, this weird thing happened.

We started talking about how the church’s language has changed so much (and needs to continually) since he began working in the church 60 years ago.  It was fascinating to hear a man of his age finding value in the way the church communicates now when so often the elder generation is discouraged by it, and we (the younger/post-modern generation, if you will) are discouraged by their discouragement.  Our conversation turned to how it changed from his parents’ generation to his own, then from his to my parents’, and then from theirs to mine.  He just kept commenting on how excited he was to see the message the same, even though the language and much of the medium is different.  HUGE VALIDATION of a call/vocation in those words.

So, he’s telling me about him mother’s rigidity to a particular form of church, the movement of the Church of God, Anderson.  He told me of a friend of his that wanted Grandpa to sleep over and then go to his church and Great-Grandmother refused to let him go.  I could still see the boyish frustration in the eyes of this pillar of my family… it was pretty funny!  Then he turned to talking of my biological grandmother’s family’s strict Russian Orthodox roots (of which I had no idea she had).  As he told me how she came to be baptized and how they met, he suddenly paused.  “Oh my goodness,” He said.  “She dies 53 years ago today…” He looked at the clock.  It said, 11:50 “… in about 25 minutes.”

Holy crap! is all I can think.

He then spent the next 27 minutes telling me stories of this woman whose blood is in me, that even my mom doesn’t know.  My mom turned 9 months old on March 3, 1956… the day she passed.  53 years ago to yesterday.  It was amazing to hear where we came from passed down through the oldest form of historical communication.  I didn’t read it.  I didn’t discover it.  I heard it from my elder.

He told me of the kind of person she was.  Caring, loving, a great hostess, always looking at how to help others before herself.  How she used to sing in the church choir and of this voice she had when she’d sing hymns.  “This beautiful voice… no wonder your mother and aunt have such beautiful voices.  I hear her in them,” he emoted.  Then, in possibily the first time I’ve seen him truly cry, he smirks as he tells me, “I LOVED to hear her sing ‘the Love of God.’  ‘How measureless, how strong.  It shall forevermore endure, the saints’ and angels’ songs.'”

I lost it.  One of my all time favorite hymns!  It’s a HUGE one for us at Crosspoint.  But, talk about a connection to your past.  My grandmother I never met and I find value in this same old hymn… a contemporary song for her written in 1948.  It’ll be as if the song “The Glory of It All” will be a favorite to my grandkids.  For the first time, I felt as though I did know my Grandma Anne.

Then right at 12:15 I looked up at the clock as he said, “Then she died.  About a week before she died, she sent a note to another pastor’s wife that had come to visit her in the hospital a few weeks before.  Later this woman shared the note with me and it ended with, ‘As this has all been going on, I’ve seen where I’m going.  It’s like being on this most beautiful mountain top… and I just don’t ever want to come down.’  PJ, that one thought has gotten me through so many restless, rough times.  And, through losing her, I truly found what it meant to pray and have TRUE, COMPLETE peace in GOD.”

I can’t wait to meet Grandma Anne in eternity.

These are the moments that keep me going.  GOD was with us yesterday.  And, HE moved.