Just... Everything

Well, with about a million projects being juggled in both my personal and professional lives, I have severely neglected this blog.  I think it's a bit more of a personal journal than anything else, however, so no harm done.  I had to post today though, because this is something I want to remember.

Last week, I was finally able to return to my family in Nebraska and Jolea was able to meet her "meemaw" (grandma) for the first time.  Thank you, Lord!  I must say, however, that it was not at all what I expected it to be.



I became a Christian well after I left home and moved back to North Carolina.  Except for a few short visits, I have not been back and I didn't realize how my new perspective would change how I perceived my family.  Jesus has changed my heart more than I knew.

I was first amazed at how much the third commandment was violated on a daily basis.  I was constantly confronted with a barrage of "GD"s, something I hadn't noticed before, but must have surely been present when I was a child.  The third commandment seemed to be the most popular to transgress, but the fifth and second came in a close second (I was only there one week, so I cannot account for commandment #4).  Please note that most of my family profess to be Catholics.

Interestingly (ironically?) enough, those in my family who consider themselves atheists were not the biggest violators.  At least from what I observed.

I felt like I was in a constant state of prayer, the entire time I was there, for both myself and those around me.  But what was the toughest to endure, was the relationship between my uncle and my grandmother. 

Grandma, who is 87, is more like a second mother to me than a grandmother.  She actually spent more time raising me than my mom, since mom was working 80-100 hours a week to try to support us.  But grandma loved it; she loves raising kids.  It's what she does best: love.  In fact, she's now raising my 13 year old cousin who has down syndrome and has been doing so since Maddy was an infant since my aunt is also a workaholic.

My uncle, let's call him "Mr. B", has never left home.  He's lived with my grandparents (grandpa passed several years ago, btw) his entire life, rent-free.  They've always paid the mortgage, all the utilities, televsion, groceries without any contribution on Mr. B's part.  Oh yes, and grandma's always done all his laundry too.  He now mows the lawn and keeps up with the landscaping, but it's probably due more to the fact that it's his hobby than any more benevolent reason.

Now my grandmother's house has become quite a mess since I left.  She was doing her spring cleaning less and less and then grandpa was hit with a stroke and became unable to care for himself.  Grandma was taking care of both him and Maddy and the house slowly got more cluttered.  This was also partly due to my grandma's love of garage-sale shopping with my mother.

Grandma has both shoulder and knee problems and is finally to the point where it's too painful to do Mr. B's laundry or take care of general household chores.  My mother, who is terminally ill, comes over each day to care for her. 

Keep in mind that Mr. B is now retired.  He still won't contribute to any of the household duties.  During my stay there, he complained not less than two times per day about how horrid the state of the house was and how everything should just be given away or taken to the dump.  Mom and grandma want to have a garage sale, but are very slow in getting everything together since neither are in peak health.  I was absolutely appalled by Mr. B, sitting in his recliner half the day watching television, complaining about the condition of the place he has been allowed to stay for free his entire life, which is terribly upsetting to my grandmother.  Especially when, with all that free time on his hands, he was most definitely in a position to help out and do something about it.

Grandma was very upset about me staying in her bedroom, because it was such a mess.  I offered to help her clean up and organize it and we did so over the course of a few days.  Her duties consisted almost entirely of sitting on the couch telling me what she wanted to keep and what she wanted to put in the garage sale, but still the entire process took perhaps 5 hours and her closet was again accessible.  Now, why couldn't Mr. B take one day a month and do that?  If he took one day a week, the entire house would be spotless within a few months.  And meanwhile respect would be maintained for my grandmother.  My mother suspects, however, that he has no respect and is just waiting for her to die so he can inherit the house and have everything hauled off.  I hope that's not the case, but I'm not so sure.

One day, towards the end of my visit, I was going through some of grandma's old photographs while having a conversation with my uncle.  I don't know how it came up, but my uncle stated that basically, it didn't matter what religion you believed in, even Buddha, they were all the same God and as long as you were good, you went to heaven.  The shock I felt at this statement was heightened by the fact that Mr. B is a supposedly devout Catholic who never misses a Sunday service and has, in fact, expressed distaste in the fact that I don't have a church that I frequent.  I won't go into the entire conversation, but I definitely tried to show him the truth, which he refuted almost violently, saying "bullsh**, bullsh**!"

Mr. B would not accept any evidence I presented from the Bible, stating he doesn't need a Bible to know what's true - it was written by men and therefore cannot be true.  He denied the beliefs of his own faith.  He denied that Jesus was anything more than a man, not the perfect son of God.  He insisted that he could get to heaven through good works. He would barely listen.

Just after he walked off, steaming (and believe me, he had no reason to be steaming, I never raised my voice and barely got to finish a sentence.  I said everything in love.), I came upon a newspaper clipping among the photographs.  It was of my grandmother's brother, I believe, but more importantly on the back was a section from a local Baptist church with a short paragraph containing excerpts from the Bible that was everything I was just trying to share with my uncle.  It could have been his salvation, and he walked back into the room just after I found it.

I asked him to please listen.  It surely must have been a sign from God to find it at that exact moment.  He refused, but stayed close and I read it anyway.  My grandmother listened intently in the chair nearby, having witnessed all this and having asked Mr. B several times to listen, as I read from the clipping (read transcript below).

Thankfully my mother has been talking to grandma about Jesus for five years, and though you can never know anyone's heart, I'm as sure now of her salvation as I am of anyone's.  My uncle?  I will pray, but I'm not sure how else I can help him open a heart so closed.

Transcript of the newspaper clipping:


"The Bible declares God to be righteous and just."


"He is the Rock, His work is perfect: for all His ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is He." Deuteronomy 32:4


Righteousness and justice are practically inseparable in Scripture because they come from the same root work.  The Hebrew word means, in a physical sense, "straight", and in a moral sense, "right".  The Greek word has a physical sense of "equal", and in a moral sense, "conformed to what is right".  In defining the righteousness and justice of God, Biblically, it is His treatment of His creatures in conformity with His holy nature.  God's righteousness demands conformity to His moral perfection on the part of all moral beings.  His justice visits non-conformity to that perfection with penal loss or suffering.  How then can a just God ever pardon and forgive sinful men and declare them righteous and receive them to glory?  Romans 3:24-26 is the answer.  God set forth His own Son to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, declaring His own righteousness for the remission of the sins of the Old Testament, that He might be just and the justifier of those who believe in Christ today.  Anyone who tries to by-pass Jesus Christ and His substitutionary death and shed blood, and try to gain heaven by their works will be visited with penal loss and suffering in hell for all eternity.  God is just and right.  He can forgive only those who receive His Son as their Savior.

Rev. Verlin Pulver, Faith Baptist Church