Yesterday we arrived in North Canton, Ohio to go to a golf tournament. It wasn’t my idea- Nick has been talking about taking his dad to a PGA tour golf tournament and he found one in Wisconsin but it was way too expensive. Then he told me he found a cheaper one in Akron, Ohio but there was one catch – it was the weekend of my birthday.
I really like my birthday. I’m not the type to throw a fit about a birthday “week” or whatever, but I expect everything to be about me. I want to be the star of the day. I even used to get a little pride out of the number of people posting on Instagram to honor my day. I was upset that this is what I had to do this year. I basically had no choice if I wanted to be with my husband. Selfishly, I didn’t want to go at all. I almost was dreading it. I thought it sounded lame. North Canton? Why oh why.
Through prayer, I realized how unfair it was to assume that the celebration of my birth would only be about me. How much would I learn to serve others if that day had nothing to do with me? Jesus softened my heart to the idea. And when we left for North Canton early yesterday, I was excited.
We stayed in North Canton at Nick’s grandmother and step-grandfather’s house.
They live about 20 minutes from the club the tournament was at, and she couldn’t have been more excited to have us.
The hard part about this trip is that her husband, Bob, had fallen and broken his arm because of pain he had after herniating a disc in his spine. The day before we got there he was transferred to a nursing facility after being in the hospital for eight days.
I have always disliked hospitals. I feel very nervous when I’m in one, visiting someone I know or don’t know very well (that’s worse). You’d think that would be eased by my job – I work in an office building attached to a hospital – but it’s not. They always make me feel strange and I have a hard time forcing myself to visit other people in them. I always think I am intruding on a very vulnerable time. It also makes me anxious that I’m going to see their butt or something because of the gown…
The thing I love most about Grammy is that she’s oblivious to this. Even if she did know, I think she’d have made me go anyway. She is so bold and loving. She didn’t ask me if I wanted to go see Bob at the nursing home. She just said “we’re going to stop in and say hi to Bob before we go to lunch”, assuming I just would want to. I’m a much better person in her mind apparently.
I had to force myself to be kind to Bob, to engage with him. He had a stroke two years ago and it affected his speech. He is the sweetest man, but I have a hard time talking to him. Not because he has trouble with certain words or is sometimes difficult to understand, but because I am uncomfortable. I don’t want to make him feel embarrassed. I’m very afraid of hurting his feelings, especially because he isn’t even my grandfather and he doesn’t have to like me.
This could not have been a more amazing experience for me to have. As I’ve addressed before, I am a stone in emotional situations by nature. Having no choice to be there or not, it forced me to break out of this habit. I told Bob about my life without caring that he was laying in a hospital bed and I listened intently to what he said. He and Jo don’t know it, but they changed me.
Later, Grammy took me shopping and spent way more than necessary on my birthday gift. She said it was for my first trip to her house that she spent money on me, and then she paid for dinner gave me more gifts. I was blown away. These people that have become my family are beyond what I could have asked for. And she called me her granddaughter. Multiple times.
This kind of generosity is unbelievable to me. These people have invited me into vulnerable times, into pain and healing. They have shown me how to be comfortable with it but also how to let it hurt. They have invited me into their homes, their lives. And they have desired to know about mine. They call me family because to them, I am, just because I married Nick. I do not have to earn their love for me and I am so grateful.
What an image of God adopting us as His children. We are invited into His heart, His family. And He treats us as if we have always been a part of it. He welcomes us into His home. And then He gives us more. Much more than we deserve.
And surprisingly, when we walked around that golf course for five hours today, I loved every minute of that sweaty adventure.
I could not have dreamed of a better birthday.