{"id":7404,"date":"2014-04-16T13:07:25","date_gmt":"2014-04-16T13:07:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/karenspearszacharias\/?p=7404"},"modified":"2014-04-16T13:33:52","modified_gmt":"2014-04-16T13:33:52","slug":"grannys-hands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/karenspearszacharias\/2014\/04\/16\/grannys-hands\/","title":{"rendered":"My Granny’s Hands"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I dreamed of my grandmother\u2019s hands. It was an odd dream since Granny\u00a0Leona has been dead a long time now.<\/p>\n

Even when she was alive, my days spent with her were few. I grew up in Georgia, a good day\u2019s drive from where\u00a0Granny lived in Church Hill, Tennessee. The town gets its name because it is just what it says it is \u2013 an Appalachian hill town with a church sitting upon its tallest spot.<\/p>\n

Granny\u00a0Leona was a cripple woman. That\u2019s what folks in East Tennessee referred to her as: \u201cDo you know Mrs. Spears? She\u2019s the cripple woman who lives at the bottom of the hill.\u201d Most of my memories are of her in a wheelchair, always painfully, slowly shuffling about the dusty wooden floors, in search of her snuff jar and her Bible.<\/p>\n

Granny\u2019s Bible was a big, black-leather book. The words Jesus spoke were highlighted in red. She would sit with that big Bible on her lap, reading by the morning light that drifted in through the window near her bed. I don\u2019t know how\u00a0Granny\u00a0knew to read her Bible. Most of my kin of\u00a0Granny\u2019s generation were illiterate. Pap, which is what we called my grandfather, only knew how to sign his formal name:\u00a0Howard J. Spears<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I bought\u00a0Granny\u00a0a birthday card once for Pap to give to his bride of over 50 years. He signed the card: Howard J. Spears. I realized later that Pap didn\u2019t know how to write \u201cwith love\u201d or \u201cHappy Birthday\u201d or even \u201cthanks.\u201d<\/p>\n

It would make\u00a0Granny\u00a0and Pap proud to know they have a granddaughter who writes books. Some people even say I write real well. But it\u2019s not my writing that I am most proud of. It\u2019s that I took to heart\u00a0Granny\u2019s teachings.<\/p>\n

She taught me to cherish the Word of God.<\/p>\n

A lot of educated people might think my\u00a0granny unsophisticated. And, I suppose, they are right about that. But given a choice between hanging out with sophisticated people or spending the afternoon in the presence of my grandmother, I would give back my college education for one more hour with Granny.<\/p>\n

She might not have been educated but\u00a0Granny\u00a0was a wise woman. She birthed eight children. She understood people and their ways. And\u00a0Granny\u2019s faith in Jesus was beautiful in its sheer simplicity.<\/p>\n

The Immaculate Conception and the Resurrection were not topics of debate for her. They were simply the facts.\u00a0Granny knew that Jesus, born of a virgin, was a man who lived his life helping others. For that, he was crucified. Three days later, inexplicably, Jesus rose again.<\/span><\/p>\n

It never occurred to\u00a0Granny\u00a0to try and explain how these things could happen. It never occurred to me to ask. I believed they happened just like the Bible said because\u00a0Granny\u00a0taught me to believe that.<\/p>\n

Granny\u00a0and I never attended church together, save for the day when we buried her son, my father.\u00a0Granny\u00a0never took me shopping for Easter clothes. She never filled an Easter basket full of eggs or plush stuffed animals for me. She never told me stories of the Easter Bunny.<\/p>\n

Faith is the Easter gift my\u00a0granny\u00a0gave to me.<\/p>\n

I would watch as she\u2019d pull a dollar bill from her change purse she kept in her dress pocket. She\u2019d send that dollar off to whatever TV preacher had ministered to her that week. Educated people sometimes laugh at people like\u00a0Granny. They think TV preachers use that money to sleep with harlots. They are right about that, some do.<\/p>\n

I never laughed at\u00a0Granny\u00a0though. I thought she had one of the purest, most trusting hearts I\u2019ve ever come across. Sometimes, my own daughters look at me with that kind of trust and it makes me want to be more like my\u00a0granny.<\/p>\n

In my dream my hands, which I rely upon daily to type out the words within my heart, were gnarled. As hard as I tried I could not get my fingers to open up. They curled into my palms, just like\u00a0Granny\u2019s had.<\/p>\n

As a teenager, I used to sit for long spells with\u00a0Granny holding her balled-up hands. I would rub her translucent skin and listen to her stories about her son, my father, the boy she lost in Vietnam.<\/p>\n

Granny\u00a0had the most remarkable hands. Her crippled feet didn\u2019t work like she wanted them to, but\u00a0Granny\u2019s knotted hands could still turn the pages of her Bible as she haltingly read to me the Easter story:<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd behold, there was a great earthquake, for the angel of the Lord descended from Heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0Matthew 28:2.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Pap & Granny Spears. East Tennessee<\/p>\n

Karen Spears Zacharias is author of Mother of Rain, Mercer Univ. Press.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 I dreamed of my grandmother\u2019s hands. It was an odd dream since Granny\u00a0Leona has been dead a long time now. Even when she was alive, my days spent with her were few. I grew up in Georgia, a good day\u2019s drive from where\u00a0Granny lived in Church Hill, Tennessee. The town gets its name because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":90,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5214,483,5604,5603,546,1950,1451,5605],"class_list":["post-7404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-belief","tag-easter","tag-easter-basket","tag-easter-bunny","tag-faith","tag-granny","tag-resurrection","tag-tv-preachers"],"yoast_head":"\nMy Granny's Hands<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"\u00a0 I dreamed of my grandmother\u2019s hands. 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