Life Stories: God's Plan for Gran

As a young girl of about 6 or 7, Mary Ellen was a very young Christian.

She learned the catechism basics about God in Catholic school but didn't come into a deeper spiritual understanding of what He was all about, until her grandmother came to take care of them when Mary Ellen's mother returned to the workforce.

As Mary Ellen grew up, Gran spent much of her time being caregiver to her grandchildren, preparing meals and doing the housekeeping while the parents worked. Often Gran could be heard walking around the house talking to God. She became the pillar of faith in Mary Ellen's house.

She was a role model to her and her two brothers and all her cousins growing up, and taught and encouraged them that it was okay to talk to God. So Mary Ellen's conversations with God started when she was about six, only hers were a little more private than Gran's in the beginning.

Gran's life had been very trying. She lost her husband to pneumonia in 1939, after only twenty years of marriage and then in the 1970's, cancer claimed three of her children barely out of their 40's. Her faith in God was always her comfort. She was often heard saying out loud "I know you've got a Plan, God, and I know you'll let me know what it is in due time."

She was content to leave it that way, in God's hands, and wait.

But Mary Ellen, as a young Christian teenager, was full of all the impatience of youth and wanted to know the Plan.

Right now!

She was looking for answers and direction......What should I do? Should I go to college to pursue a writing career? Or should I follow my heart to become a wife and mother?

She tried to echo Gran's words with confidence, that she knew God had a Plan for her. She just had to wait for Him to get around to sharing it. Gran's faith was also a support in her questioning times.

When Mary Ellen entered Catholic high school and by all accounts still a young Christian, her faith had settled into a much deeper place and her talks with God became more earnest. Her life became more complicated due to her parents' divorce, teen pressures, academic studies, and career choices.

For Mary Ellen, the Catholic Church became just a place to go for Sunday Mass for an hour; it really didn't offer much spiritually to youths in those days. Her private prayer time grew longer and chats with God more detailed. And, all along, Gran kept telling her "I know God has a Plan for you, my dear. He'll let you know what it is in due time."

Mary Ellen began to pray that her impatience would abate and she would be able to confidently put herself in His Hands. She hadn't realized it, but Gran said she had been doing that all along.

Mary Ellen kept on writing little works all through school, occasionally submitting an article to the school newspaper - nothing of great account, but still, writing was close to her heart. She didn't have time to join the newspaper staff, because she had to work a part time job after school to pay toward her clothes and school expenses. With her parents' divorce, her mother was the sole income to their house and child support was rarely on time, if it came at all. Her mother explained the she just didn't have extra money to give her each week and that Mary Ellen was old enough to get a part time job after school. She really wanted to go on to higher education but her mother made it clear that the money was just not there in her family for her to do that.

So she prayed for direction often, and kind of just went along with whatever game plan God had for her at that time. When Mary Ellen graduated from high school, she decided she wanted to move away from home, get out on her own, and be less of a burden to her mother financially. Mary Ellen didn't see Gran every day now as she had before, but visited her at least twice a week.

Mary Ellen stopped going to Church altogether and didn't bother seeking out another church, Catholic or otherwise. She got caught up in the ways of the world, trying to carve out some kind of life for herself. Right after high school graduation, she started out working in the bank offices where her mother worked, but it was hard to work with your mother every day. It was like she never left home. Mary Ellen started to wander aimlessly from job to job over the next few years, including a Kelly Girl Temp job in City Hall, which she found interesting.

She decided to take computer courses and creative writing courses at night school college. As an afterthought, she added journalism to see if she could find her niche. She was still writing as a hobby, but nothing of novel length or great accomplishment. Journalism was still drawing her close. She was so overwhelmed with just the magnitude of it all - so many professions to consider. She still did not have a clue as to what she was going to do with the rest of her life. The pressure from society was to "BE" something or someone and Mary Ellen was feeling those pressures like most young girls her age.

Gran could not understand the reasons behind Mary Ellen's mental torment. Gran told her that she never had a "profession" or a trade in her life, and couldn't understand all the hoopla about it. Oh yes, Gran had worked part time when her kids were growing up, just to help her husband out and to add to the family kitty, little jobs here and there. When her husband had died in 1939, she had to find full time work to support her four children, the youngest was nine.

After working three years, she was injured at work. She broke her kneecap and a surgeon said it was beyond repair, so he removed it and sewed it up. This was 1943, in the days before knee replacement surgeries that are so popular today. She never walked right again after that, and many doctors said she would never be employed again. From then on, she was at home, trying to finish raising her children, getting by on a small Social Security check. All four of her children went to work at an early age, as was the norm in the 1940's and 1950's to help with finances..

As for dating, boys came and went in Mary Ellen's life; no one of any consequence, just your regular run of the mill young men of the 60's and 70's of which she was not interested. They were aggressive in their worklife, passive in their personal relationships and were of little "faith". Their careers were what was most important to them.

Mary Ellen found that career-minded young men didn't talk to God all through the day, and they more or less expected to make their own way in the world, without depending on God too much. Because of her many changes in employment and lack of church affiliation, she just didn't travel around in the right quarters to be able to meet nice Christian boys. Men.

When she really stopped to think about it, her faith was what was important to her -- it was a way of life for her. In her early teen years, Mary Ellen had foolishly took for granted that other people had some sort of relationship with God, just on different levels. But she was soon to find that not everyone was like Gran.... not everyone was like her.

Mary Ellen came to realize that she really didn't want a "profession" because the rat race of it all was not appealing to her. Writing was a solitary field and although she learned it was hard to make a living from it, she found there was nothing wrong with keeping it around as a hobby.

She prayed for God to send her a young man, someone who accepted her and her faith as a package deal.

When Mary Ellen met her future husband, Michael, he accepted her for who she was and didn't knock it, like so many others in the past. He thought she was beautiful when no one had ever even called her pretty.

She had always been vocal in her feelings about God, in alone times and in the company of others, and although Michael acknowledged God, he did not totally accept God as a major part of his life.

The depth of his faith didn't matter much now to Mary Ellen. She was ready to settle down, get married and have a family.

Gran's husband didn't share her deep faith either, and she told Mary Ellen that as long as she lived her faith, everything would fall into place and be all right. Gran told her again, to be content, to wait and see.

As a young wife, Mary Ellen prayed for children to come along because six years had gone by and, as a young married couple, they were still alone. Mary Ellen told God that she knew He had a Plan and promised that she would raise her children up to know Him and love Him.

In the meantime, she found a church that had much to offer to young families and whose beliefs she shared. Getting involved in the church activities, she was content to wait it out, but in the meantime, she decided she would do all she could here on earth to help Him along.

After many doctors, many miscarriages, surgical procedures, and years of prayer, God sent them two beautiful children.

Indeed, Mary Ellen was beginning to see God's Plan.

Gran died when Mary Ellen's second child was just two years old. Toward the end of her life, she became blind and deaf and lived the last five years of her life in that way.

Her faith never faltered. Mary Ellen remembered walking into her mother's house often and hearing Gran praying her daily novenas and talking to God in her usual way, mindless of whomever was passing through the room.

In the last year of her life, her 90th, her medical situation was not the best due to congestive heart failure and complications from diabetes. Mary Ellen's mother would not put Gran in a nursing home; she kept her at home with her, since she was the only surviving child of four. By now she had remarried and did not have to work at a job, so taking care of Gran was what filled her days in the last few years.

Gran's deafness was very severe and hearing aids were of no help. In the hospital just a few days before she died, there was a Cuban nurse named Grace with an unusually deep voice for a woman, whom Gran was able to hear up close to her ear. Loudly.

When male family members came to visit, Gran could hear them too, depending on the timber of their voice. But for the most part, Grace became their messenger to Gran because she could not hear low voices, especially female voices.

One day, Mary Ellen walked into Gran's hospital room and Grace was just finishing up Gran's sponge bath and straightening her bed linen. Grace "announced" Mary Ellen to Gran and Gran said in a normal voice "Oh, she's here...good, I was thinking of her today." And they had a conversation with Grace repeating everything into Gran's ear. It was the last time Gran would be able to talk to Mary Ellen before she became comatose later that day.

She told Mary Ellen that she was ready to go home to God, that indeed, He had been waiting for her. Her body had given up the fight and her spirit wanted out, but she was willing to wait for God to come and get her. She was tired, but she was content to wait, knowing the time was near.

Gran talked about relatives who had passed on and of seeing the angels. She said the feeling of hugging and comfort that often came over her in the quiet of her hospital room and when she talked to God at those times, made her feel just a little closer to God than she had all of her life. The angels were so sweet, she said, and very beautiful.

Mary Ellen remembered being amazed that for someone who was probably going to die soon, Gran was so calm, almost content. Her faith had carried her all through her life, along with her many personal conversations with God. Gran always "knew" He had a Plan for her and she had learned patience all through her life, in waiting for it to be revealed to her. She also accepted all those times, when it seemed to her that she was never going to understand or know the Plan, because to her, God would always take care of her. And He did.

Just before Gran slipped into a coma, she said "Our Father, who art in Heaven, thank you for making a place for me with You." When Mary Ellen thought she had fallen into a deep sleep, she added, "And thank you, God, for such a wonderful Plan."

In the years since Gran has passed on, Mary Ellen was so thankful for her presence in her life. She left behind a wonderful legacy, and Mary Ellen passed it on to her sons. Although Gran never had a "profession" per se, Mary Ellen was sure Gran was following God's Plan.

Being a Mom was important to Gran, and being a Grandmom was equally important in a world where her grown children had to work because of finances. She was always "there" for all her grandchildren, to be teacher about God. No one couldn't have asked for a better teacher.

In Mary Ellen's life, there have been very trying times and very good times.

Because of Gran's sharing God, she became convinced that God does have a Plan for each of us.

But there are times, Mary Ellen thought, when it probably takes just a little bit longer for some people to get the message.

© Copyright January 1986 -- Anne DiGeorge