On this summer date in 1899, sweet Edith was born in rural Indiana.
She lived a faithful, unpretentious and hard working life within a few miles of her backroads birthplace, sprinkling her many friends and large family with the very "Mercy!" she frequently declared. She raised five children to adulthood without daycare, cell phones or air conditioning, crafted noodles from scratch and wrung her own chickens' necks. She claimed she could hear corn grow. My grandmother's meekness was a mighty testimony.

I inherited a hankie, her leather pocketbook, and a fond recollection of streaming dust down a dirt road on our way to church while Grandma steered the car with her knees, adjusting her hat with a sharp pin.

Hundreds of sympathizers swarmed our family with condolences when Grandma died 69 years young, strands of silver in her long dark hair. Such was her godly influence that when my grandfather passed on sixteen years later, he left instructions for his casket to be buried a foot deeper than hers and with his body turned, as if looking upward at a saint.

Her death ended my idyllic childhood and helped me realize that it's not where you've been that matters so much, but where you're headed. I'd like to know her better now that I'm willing to listen. No greater compliment have I ever heard than, "you remind me of your grandmother."

The intense grief I experienced when I lost the joy of knowing this woman is a painful glimpse of how God must have felt when his people moved away from His garden home. It's an earthly bitter taste--and immensely merciful preview--of how it feels to be eternally separated from One Who Loves.

To keep or not--that is the question.
Room by room, I've declared a battle on my house.
Better to be safe than sorry has rolled me into this snowball.
From now on, I'm relying on short term memory loss
to explain anything missing in attic.