A Woman of Faith

I will tell, briefly, the story of my great-great-grandmother. As a young girl, impoverished, she sought employment as a maid at about the age of 14 or 15, which was and is common in Central America (and other parts of Latin America). The employers, however, often look at these maidens as little more than ploys for pleasures. Her employer raped her. She then left his employment only to discover that she was carrying a child by him. She chose to keep her baby. Because of her choice, for the rest of her life she bore the snickers, sneers, whispers and suspicions of what had transpired. The ruminations lingered for decades and even in a foreign land long after her mortal remains were laid to rest.

I speak of her and what she did on her path in life. This is not political. This is family. My great-great-grandmother kept her child, a baby girl, my great-grandmother, and raised her daughter to love Jesus, to love God, to strive to keep His commandments. In a country where the dominant Christian church enjoyed exclusive privilege and sanction, my great-great-grandmother chose Evangelical Christianity, with heavy emphasis on loving and living by the Word of God contained in The Holy Bible.

Her daughter grew to marry a man who became a trial of her faith; he was manic depressive, alcoholic, abusive, obtuse, yet she chose to stay, and pray. Gradually he softened, and though it may be said that he, my great-grandfather, seldom if ever lived fully worthy of her love and devotion, his shortcomings never had the lasting effect on their children the way her faith did, my great-grandmother's. My great-grandmother, the child of rape, adored her Savior, and she instilled faith in Him and in His word in all of her children. My grandmother, one of her daughters, likewise found only domestic trials, but when facing raising her children sans any paternal assistance, she chose to rely on The Lord and come to America. She eventually brought my father here, and though my father, in some regards, played out the manic states of his grandfather, my father's heart was eventually softened and comforted by his undying love of The Lord and His Word, a love taught to him by his mother, my grandmother, a love taught to her by her mother, my great-grandmother, a love taught to her by her mother, my great-great-grandmother.

This love of The Lord is the great inheritance of my family. It is a love of The Lord coupled with a love of His word. It is a love that sees us through our seas of often self-inflicted affliction, eventually bringing us to safer shores and peaceful rest.

Someday I will see my great-great-grandmother, and I will hail her as Matriarch of Honor. She, I am certain, now glories in her decision to have her child and love her. And as she, my great-great-grandmother, is joined by descendants filled with the light of the love of their Lord, I am certain she is exalted in the choices she made.

Our world says "women are exalted by their choices." Indeed. woman is exalted by her choices. Let

us choose well remembering that our choices live on, both in this world and beyond.

(Pictured below is my great-grand-mother, the child my great-great-grandmother chose to have, love, and raise unto The Lord.)