The Story of our lives
22 March 2018
… started long before I fell in love with my husband. I choose to believe that God had everything planned from the beginning. There is more to our story than just me, the spoiled brat who fell in love with the youngest son of a widow.
My mother-in-law is a saint! She is one of the wisest people I know. She left school in grade 10, as the only daughter, to come and help her parents and great grandparents on the farm. She has a beautiful love story of how she met her husband, who she only was married to for a short 10 years.
As a young bride, my greatest fear was that I didn't want to raise my children with such a great struggle, as she did. And I salute my mother-in-law for doing an amazing job under very difficult circumstances.
I can only imagine what they all must experience when the most amazing son ever died, who sacrificed near 22 years of his 44-year life, to stay near his birth ground.
Now I had the privilege to have had a very hard-working grandfather on a farm and my childhood memories of my grandmother's kitchen, which I relive every time I walk into my mother-in-law's kitchen.
The smells are so similar; the old fashion values are the same.
Anyway, I know nothing about farming, but my mother-in-law does and my daughter does too. So from her kitchen window, there are these two little dams. Empty and overgrown with grass. She actually never asks for anything, she just mentions things. Now, if my husband wanted something, I would try to move mountains for him, and he now never will see the final product of the garage of his dreams he wanted. When he lived, he also mentioned these dams needed to be cleaned out, especially during dry times.
So, whatever my mother-in-law wants, I will try and make it possible, and not to take away from her glory, she didn't even ask, just mention.
When she heard that I want to clean the dams at my expense, she very nicely insisted on not worrying about it and told me how in the old days they used oxen with a digger tool, to clean out these dams.
I joked and said, we will find a horse if it must. As I told my daughter this, she said, not her horse. And then she said, really, we are not in the dark ages anymore, get me a tractor and I will do it. Only 1 year younger, than her grandmother was when she left school, driving a tractor to plough the fields and helping to milk the cows by hand.
I have the greatest respect for my mother-in-law and my husband, I will honour their wishes best I can.
Midst of lots of emotional issues, I am a widow now too.
I am honoured that God has chosen me for this part in the story of our lives.
I married my husband for love, and I will be forever thankful for the good and the bad, because of his choice to do the honourable thing and always be nearby his mom, even in his last 3 years, never forgetting his mom, and to a lot of other people, he was the local Good Samaritan too. My husband is still strong in spirit, standing in for us forever now, even stronger than on earth.
In this I take my comfort, those who are last on earth will be 1st in heaven.
