If you've been following my blog, you know that I've been choosing mugs that I feel reflect certain qualities of important people in my life. This mug displays a rose, which typically symbolizes beauty, love, and passion. I can think of no one who fits that description better than my Aunt Elsie.
Beauty - Aunt Elsie is lovely--beautiful skin, sparkling blue eyes, radiant smile--but there's an even deeper beauty that draws people to my aunt. It's "the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit" (I Peter 3:4). Others can feel the love of Jesus when they are around Aunt Elsie, and they feel cared for.
Love - Aunt Elsie has a God-given capacity, a grace, if you will, to love people of all ages, backgrounds, and personalities. She is simply full of love. Growing up, I got to be a regular recipient of that love in a tangible way. But even when extended periods of time have gone by without seeing my aunt, I could still feel her love from afar and knew that she was praying for me.
Passion - Aunt Elsie is passionate about others experiencing the abundant life God has planned for them, to know Him intimately and experience His fullness. She looks for every opportunity to introduce others to the loving Jesus she knows so well and to declare to the hearts of the discouraged His great love for them. She is a prayer warrior and an encourager whose two-fold heart's desire is for the Lord to be exalted through her life and for her loved ones to know and serve Him.
In my estimation, my Aunt Elsie could not be more perfect if she tried. Not only is she a beautiful ambassador of the love of God--she is what I like to call a heritage facilitator. If you want to know something about the Miles family line, just ask Aunt Elsie. And if you're at a family reunion (which she has probably organized) and you're not sure who so-and-so is, she will know. She knows all the shirt-tail relations and then some. Her family tree--with all its respective branches and graftings--is very important to her. Her abounding love for family is a wonderful picture of the Father's love for His family. "See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are" (I John 3:1a).
I honestly cannot say if I would be serving God today if not for the influence of my Aunt Elsie. During a crucial and awkward time of my life, Aunt Elsie took me to church, prayed with me regularly, spoke words of life into me, and loved me like her own. She believed in me when I didn't even believe in myself.
A poem I wrote in college in 1991 captures some highlights of why I love her so dearly:
Only One Aunt Elsie
I was always welcome at your house, and you were always quick to tell people I was your niece.
At your house I could have a piece of cake or a potato chip with your special pineapple dip whenever I wanted it.
When I spent the night, you would play "Nola" on the piano for me and would sing "To God be the Glory," my first church solo. We would sleep in your big, fluffy bed and you would read me stories about God's pwoer and his love for us. Then we would pray. I always slept well.
Sometimes you would let me draw pictures with your fluorescent chalks and let me play dress-up with your clothes and wig. One time you even let me borrow Grandma Millie's Centennial dress and bonnet for a school play.
On Sundays, you took me to Sunday School and church. You always kissed me when you dropped me off at home and said, "I love you, Honey."
I often wonder where poverty and exclusion from my peers would've found me if it weren't for your believing in me, and by your love, showing me how to believe in the one who made me.
Aunt Elsie can sing like an angel, play the piano with gusto, and create beautiful chalk drawings that draw you into them as if crossing a magical passage into a new land. But it's not her talents that have so endeared her to me. It's the confident knowledge that she will always love me, always find me worthwhile. You've heard the phrase, "You can't out-love God." Well, I don't think one could out-love my Aunt Elsie either.
My prayer for Aunt Elsie is that her prayers would be answered, that others would serve her well, and that she could experience more of the love of Jesus than she already knows. She continues to fight the good fight, to run the race, to keep the faith (2 Timothy 4:7), and great will be her reward one day. I, for one, can only hope to live up to her example and to honor the investment she's made in me by investing in others.
Aunt Elsie, you're sweeter than apple pie a la mode--in a puffy chair--on a rainy day. You light up my life in more ways than you know. I will always love you and consider you "the best."
No comments:
Post a Comment