Take a seat, Monkeypox. There’s another new virus in town, although so far, it’s affected only one person on the planet: my granddaughter, Sadie. It’s called “Gramsickness” and apparently my granddaughter came down with it just after my husband and I stayed with our grandkids while our son and his wife were at the hospital having a new baby.
There are so many great things about being a grandmother, including the fact that my grandkids are veritable fountains of column ideas. Getting paid to write about your grandkids is a great gig if you can get it.
At some point during our recent stay with those grandcuties, I was chatting with 5-year-old Sadie, who was missing her mama a bit. I told her I was sure her mom was homesick and anxious to come home with the new baby.
“What’s homesick?” Sadie asked, so I explained it to her.
The evening after our son, his wife and the new baby returned home and Joe and I were back at our house, I got a text from my son saying that as he was putting Sadie to bed, she said, “I have Gramsickness. I miss Gram so much. She let me have juice boxes EVERY DAY. And lollipops and even Chick-Fil-A ice cream. You NEVER let me do that.”
Sadie certainly massaged the facts a wee bit. In reality, she had exactly one juice box and one lollipop during our two-day stay, and we didn’t go to Chick-Fil-A. However, she obviously viewed this bedtime conversation as a negotiation with her Daddy and as all experienced negotiators know, you have to initially set the bar high in order to get a good counter-offer.
If my son’s text had ended with the “I miss Gram so much” line, I would’ve been enveloped in all the warm fuzzies. But the lollipop, juice box and ice cream addendum exposed what Sadie’s alleged “Gramsickness” was really about.
It didn’t hurt my feelings. If you’re easily offended by 5-year-olds, you better not venture anywhere near one. Besides, if we’re honest, even our adult relationships are usually a mixed bag of loving people for what they do for us and for who they are. In fact, for most of us, our relationship with God is a combination, too.
No one in their right mind wants to spend eternity in hell, so most of us who are professing Christians begin our journeys by taking God up on His unimaginably generous offer to save us from eternal damnation. How could we not love someone who’s willing to forgive and bless us like that?
But if our relationship with God never progresses beyond an eternal fire insurance policy, we’re missing so much. Our salvation is obviously a huge deal, but God’s intent isn’t to just save us FROM something—hell—He also wants to save us TO and FOR some things.
Things like knowing God (Jeremiah 9:23-24), walking in a close, personal relationship with Him (John 15:15 and 1 John 3:1), and living a life rich with purpose and meaning as we serve as His ambassadors in this world (2 Corinthians 5:20).
I’m not surprised that Sadie may currently love me mostly for what I give and do for her, but I hope that as she grows up, she will also love me for who I am.
In the same way, how it must bless God when in addition to being thankful for His gifts and blessings, as great as they are, we also love Him for Who He is.
“Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power … .” – Revelation 4:11a