Keeping Hearts Close: Keep ‘Em Going
A mother recently encouraged me to share thoughts on ways to keep the hearts of parents and their adult children close when they can’t be close physically. Today I’d like to tell you about a family whose members are keeping their hearts close—and their health healthier—when families can be together physically.
My friend Sandra (not her real name) is a small woman whose thick, white hair frames her sweet face with its pretty smile. I’m sorry that I don’t know her husband better. I have only met him once or twice, but I enjoyed his fun personality.
Sandra’s husband’s health has been declining for some time. When she and I chatted after church recently, she told me that the decline is continuing. But she added, “We keep our great-grandchildren twice a week and help out on weekends sometimes. That keeps him going.”
Sometimes adult children limit their time with their parents and their children’s time with them in order to give them time to rest, but sometimes the very best thing for older people is to give them lots of time with their precious loved ones. Sometimes that’s what keeps ’em going.
My cousins Jim and Jack Tucker visit our great-grandparents Pa Jim and Mama Head
on the front porch of their little white house in Springfield, Tennessee, c. 1960.
Sometimes the best way to love your parents, your grandparents, and your children is to share all of them with each other.
Now Joseph stayed in Egypt,
he and his father’s household,
and Joseph lived one hundred and ten years.
Joseph saw the third generation of Ephraim’s sons;
also the sons of Machir, the son of Manasseh,
were born on Joseph’s knees.
Genesis 50:23
Now to Him who is able to do
far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think,
according to the power that works within us,
to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus
to all generations forever and ever. Amen.
Ephesians 3:1 4-21