In Granny's House

     We didn't say," Pap's house", it was always "Granny's". I thought about that as a child and felt it a bit unfair toward Pap, and tried all I could to pay more attention to him, I'm not sure he even noticed, and now years later, Pap's gone and I think he was relieved to give the burden of our attention to her, and so it remained Granny's house.
   Of course it was Granny's house. She is the one who loved us, made bread and gave us a lump of dough to work. Faithfully she made homemade yogurt, canned applesauce and plum jam, even my children know about Granny's peanut butter cookies. She talked to us about Jesus and let us listen to the man on tape who talked about Jesus. She saved every work of art and hung them above the kitchen table as relics of a past when we were there to need her love, her way of loving.

  Granny is the needy one. I think that she wasn't loved enough as a child and often struggles to express her love that gets misunderstood. She was stricken with polio as a toddler and orphaned soon after. During the depression no one wanted to take in another mouth to feed so she and her two brothers were sent off to the Connie Maxwell Orphanage. They grew up there under strict rules and supervision, without individual attention or personal instruction that a mother would administer. A good life physically speaking, but emotionally unsupported. It was the Depression and there were many children.
   The stories Granny tells have often made me think of writing a book...another time and not here.

   Last week the children and I went to visit and help out as much as we could around the house. Everything I did made me rethink how I viewed her, her lifestyle, her faith and convictions. I reviewed them because when I was a little girl it was Granny. Older with children of my own I want to know who? Do outside people understand her and where she came from? The life style suggests that this is a simple Appalachian lady who hasn't been off the mountain in years, to be pitied for her poverty and primitive living conditions.
  Last winter Joseph Branham had a few gentlemen to come to my Granny's and to ask her if she would give her testimony. They filmed her and wrote an piece for  Catch the Vision ( her testimony starts about half way through the video clip) . While they were there they helped her take care of several things that hadn't been done to winterize her house. I was very touched by their benevolence.But I was filled with mixed feelings about the article in the magazine. Granny was portrayed as  lonely, poverty stricken, frail. Is she really that way and I can't see it?
  Josephine Jarvis is commonly misunderstood. I tried to find the words that would describe her lifestyle : chosen solitude, unmaterialistic solitude. She has everything she wants (except her family living beside her, and in that she is lonely). Granny has it all in the shape of books, reel-to-reel, cassette tapes, CDs, and MP3s. She has her quiet that gives her the liberty to pray for her loved ones as often as she feels their need, it is what gives her strength.  She doesn't need or long for material goods. As well as her spiritual condition she is concerned for her physical well being also. She looks forward to the box of vitamins that are coming in the mail, that, after extensive research, she has ordered.
  So many people look at her and her apparent state of want and desire to pity her. They can't see except through their own eyes the things she lacks that would appear to make her life easier. She doesn't want, she has. She is the kind that has two coats so as to give you one. She doesn't keep she gives.

 The older I get the more I understand her. Let her have her peace and quiet in this crazy world, she just wants to stay back in her hollow and talk to the Lord. Let her save every yogurt container she has ever opened, she might make some fudge and need a container to send it home with you. Let her get some vitamins for you  that she thinks would help you, you never know, she might know what she's talking about.