Grandma’s Quotes:
1. If you’re ever headed the wrong way in life, remember the road to Heaven allows U-turns.
2. The future should be very important to you. It’s where you will spend the rest of your life.
3. It’s a wasted day if you haven’t laughed.
4. Of all the things you wear, your expression is the most important.
5. If you’re afraid you'll make a mistake, you won’t make anything.
6. If you want to leave footprints in the sands of time, wear work boots.
7. It takes two people to start an argument, and only one to end it.
8. If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything.
9. Be the job big or small, do it well or not at all.
10. Pink sky in morning, sailors take warning. Pink sky at night, sailors delight.
11. 30 days has September, April, June, and November, all the rest have 31 except for February has 28 (every four years 29).
My mom used to say these to us. Now I tell my grandkids.
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Dear Next Generation,
When I was young, I heard an older person say, “Always remember, you are just passing through.” At the time, I didn’t think much about these words. There is a tendency when you are young to think that life will always be the way you see it around you. But now that I am much older, I see that there is wisdom in these words. We are just passing through, but it matters greatly how we pass through.
We are all heading somewhere, and we need to keep the final destination in mind. It affects the way we live life in the present, especially when we realize there are eternal consequences for the way we “pass through.”
Our lives are valuable and important in spite of the hard knocks we take and the problems that we ourselves cause. Our lives end up affecting others in ways we can’t even imagine. We would probably be amazed and even horrified if we could somehow be given a visual picture of the impact our words and actions were having on others. With this in mind, we need to live respectfully, honoring God and considering the lives of other people as important as our own.
Will we make mistakes? Absolutely, and some of them will be serious. Can we be forgiven? Yes, but we have to ask for it in sincerity and realize our great need for it.
I believe there is a “happily ever after” to life, but it’s not in the here and now. It’s in the final destination. But we need to “pass through” in the right way in order to get there.
Since I’ve always loved fairy tales and now have grandchildren, I recently wrote a fairy tale for children. This gave me a chance to express these ideas in a creative way. It’s called “The Kingdom of Fairwind” and was published last year. I do believe in happy endings.
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