The Year of the Grandma

 One year ago on the night before Grandparent's Day 2019, My Beloved and I received the news we were going to be grandparents for the first time. Spring 2020 our very first grandbaby entered the world just as this thing called a pandemic hit the area. Let me assure everyone reading this that at that moment the virus meant nothing to me, nothing at all. I was a grandmother. My grandbaby girl was born, and she changed my world, not a pandemic. Did she change my world when she was born? No. This little one changed my world the moment I found out she was coming. 

From the first moment of being told nothing has been the same. I didn't become a grandmother at her birth; I became one when her life was announced. As she grew in the secret place of her mother's womb, Grandma prayed. While she learned her mama's heartbeat from the inside, Grandma loved her and wept with delight over her. God was fearfully and wonderfully knitting her together, and Grandma declared His love over her day in and day out. During the day, throughout the night, month following month, Grandma's love for this girl grew and grew and grew and grew. And now, after two months of getting to know her face to face, Grandma prays, loves, weeps with delight, and declares the love of God over this delightful one during the day, throughout the night. My Grandma love grows and grows and grows and grows.  

This girl who will someday call me some version of Grandma is a love gift straight from God. For only the One Who is Love could have given such a gift to treasure. Some people will remember the past year as a year of horror, terror, riots, raging, death, and pain, and those things have all taken place. However, for me, love outshines it all. For me, it is The Year of the Grandma.