Motherhood is a different kind of thing. I was not expecting everything that came along with it. I was expecting the joy, but I wasn’t expecting the difficulty. I was expecting to lose sleep, but not myself. I was expecting a lot of things, and got a completely different set of things instead. Motherhood is wonderful, and awesome, and sometimes awesomely hard. But, I have been blessed with some great mother figures. My mother is an awesome lady, great mom, and amazing granny. She’s as soft as she can be and as hard as she needs to be. My mother is a true blessing in my life. But, before my mother was a mother, her mother was a mother. That sounds complicated. My mom exists only because of her mom. And, I’m so thankful for Dorothy Beatrice having been my mother’s mother.
I wanted to pay tribute to my grandmother this mother’s day. She was a special kind of lady for sure. Sometimes I have to admit that I believed she was actually losing her mind. I thought that she acted childish and that she was sometimes judgmental. But, the truth is that it was my eyes that were wrong, not my grandmother. She was a beautiful woman of God. She was a strong yet submissive wife. She was a stern, but loving mother and grandmother. She was a steadfast example of the church in my life. She had a servant’s heart, and loved people. She and I are much more similar than I would have ever wanted to admit in my younger days.
Today is my her birthday. She loved to dance, and sing, and make children laugh. She worked hard in her life so that the people that were depending on her would have all the things they needed.
She was born Dorothy Beatrice Hamlet. She always went by Beatrice, and sometimes just Bee or Be-at (pronounced as two separate words but still joined together). Dorothy is the name we chose to give to our daughter in honor or my grandmother, and Michael's great grandmothers. The name means gift of God. My grandmother was certainly a gift of God. She taught me so much about who God is, and I can never thank her enough for that.
I remember distinctly sitting and waiting for the bus with her. She put my on the school bus in the mornings as a child. She would pile all of us in the car and drive up to the local convenience store where the bus picked us up. She would ask us about school and make sure we had all we needed. This particular day I remember being upset about things that other students were saying and doing, and I wanted to be mean back to them. Grandma asked me, is that what Jesus would do? Sometimes she made me so mad with that phrase. You know the way you get mad when you know what you should do, but you just don't want to do it because it's going to be hard? She had a way of challenging us.
We also gave her a run for her money I'm sure. I can remember getting a butt whooping because we were fighting in the back yard. I mean really, Grandma? I was already bleeding, and you need to whoop me too? But, yes, she did because fighting was wrong, and discipline helps us grow.
She taught me to work hard. I shelled thousands of beans and probably removed a million corn silks at her house. I can still smell her cool sheets on the pallet in the floor those summer nights that we stayed with her. Sometimes I'll pull sheets out of the closet now and they'll smell like that. I have to stop and just drink it in. Those are the beautiful reminders of the gift she was in our lives.
There are so many memories I could recount, but I'll end with this one. They day that my grandmother went home to be with her father. It was Father's Day and all of her girls were in her room with her talking. That's what she loved to do best; talk. And in the beauty of an ordinary moment we noticed that she was no longer drawing breath. We cried and celebrated that she was with the ultimate Father on Father's day. As we cleaned the room and waited for the funeral home, we sang I'll Fly Away.
Dorothy Beatrice: Thank you for being our gift from God. Thank you for so many lessons learned and so many memories made. I pray that I can be the type of mother that you were, and the type of mother that you taught my mother to be. Motherhood is hard, but Beatrice definitely danced through it with God's love. Happy Birthday.
I wanted to pay tribute to my grandmother this mother’s day. She was a special kind of lady for sure. Sometimes I have to admit that I believed she was actually losing her mind. I thought that she acted childish and that she was sometimes judgmental. But, the truth is that it was my eyes that were wrong, not my grandmother. She was a beautiful woman of God. She was a strong yet submissive wife. She was a stern, but loving mother and grandmother. She was a steadfast example of the church in my life. She had a servant’s heart, and loved people. She and I are much more similar than I would have ever wanted to admit in my younger days.
Today is my her birthday. She loved to dance, and sing, and make children laugh. She worked hard in her life so that the people that were depending on her would have all the things they needed.
She was born Dorothy Beatrice Hamlet. She always went by Beatrice, and sometimes just Bee or Be-at (pronounced as two separate words but still joined together). Dorothy is the name we chose to give to our daughter in honor or my grandmother, and Michael's great grandmothers. The name means gift of God. My grandmother was certainly a gift of God. She taught me so much about who God is, and I can never thank her enough for that.
I remember distinctly sitting and waiting for the bus with her. She put my on the school bus in the mornings as a child. She would pile all of us in the car and drive up to the local convenience store where the bus picked us up. She would ask us about school and make sure we had all we needed. This particular day I remember being upset about things that other students were saying and doing, and I wanted to be mean back to them. Grandma asked me, is that what Jesus would do? Sometimes she made me so mad with that phrase. You know the way you get mad when you know what you should do, but you just don't want to do it because it's going to be hard? She had a way of challenging us.
We also gave her a run for her money I'm sure. I can remember getting a butt whooping because we were fighting in the back yard. I mean really, Grandma? I was already bleeding, and you need to whoop me too? But, yes, she did because fighting was wrong, and discipline helps us grow.
She taught me to work hard. I shelled thousands of beans and probably removed a million corn silks at her house. I can still smell her cool sheets on the pallet in the floor those summer nights that we stayed with her. Sometimes I'll pull sheets out of the closet now and they'll smell like that. I have to stop and just drink it in. Those are the beautiful reminders of the gift she was in our lives.
There are so many memories I could recount, but I'll end with this one. They day that my grandmother went home to be with her father. It was Father's Day and all of her girls were in her room with her talking. That's what she loved to do best; talk. And in the beauty of an ordinary moment we noticed that she was no longer drawing breath. We cried and celebrated that she was with the ultimate Father on Father's day. As we cleaned the room and waited for the funeral home, we sang I'll Fly Away.
Dorothy Beatrice: Thank you for being our gift from God. Thank you for so many lessons learned and so many memories made. I pray that I can be the type of mother that you were, and the type of mother that you taught my mother to be. Motherhood is hard, but Beatrice definitely danced through it with God's love. Happy Birthday.
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