Heritage

I watched her as she got dressed.  She held deep sorrow in her eyes, yet I saw strength, courage and beauty.  There I stood, a girl just getting started good as a wife; not yet a mother, watching this lady who had lived a life time of joy and sorrow.  This day, like so many others, she was a wife dressing to please the man that she had spent a lifetime with, a life that held many sweet stories. 

“Do you think he would think I look pretty today?” she asked me.

I stumbled for words as the tears stuck in my throat.  “Yes ma’am, I know he would,” was my reply because to me she was beautiful dressed in red.  You see red was his favorite color. 

“Well today I’ll stand by him one last time,” was her soft declaration.

Standing by him was all she knew how to do.  She had done so with joy, pride and love for so many years.  Standing by him, honoring him was like breathing to her.

My Nana stood by my Papa’s casket that night for hours as person after person filed by her, expressing their sympathy.  She chatted with each person, hugging and sharing tears with many, but all the while she stood. With elegance and grace she stood beside her husband one more time.

 

 

This is my heritage.  This is one of many stories I could tell about the women who came before me and the ones who shaped the way I would enter into marriage.  I am blessed with those examples, grandmothers and a mother who have honored their husbands. 

Now I’m not under the illusion that they were perfect or that there marriages were/are perfect.  I know that marriage is made up of two imperfect individuals.  There are times when the honoring is hard and times when it comes easy. 

As my Nana would say, “Sometimes I could pinch his head off!”  We have these times, all of us.  However, it’s the commitment made before God to stand by our husband, honoring him that gets us through the tough seasons.

What a legacy we can leave, if we choose, for the generations that follow…honoring God by honoring our husbands.