Caroline McCrorey

One hundred years ago today, Caroline Gertrude McCrorey was born.  My Grandmama was fifty years old when her first grandchild was born, but it seems like every picture I have seen of her had a baby on one knee. Every cousin, every aunt and uncle, everybody started out their picture-taking career being dangled on Grandmama's lap.

Grandmama (or Mæ-mæ, as some of my cousins inexplicably called her) held so many babies over the course of her life that somehow it seems as though it is how we all got our start. 

This morning, one of my beloved cousins posted on social media, "I know my grandmother prayed for us each day by name." 

She did.  I witnessed it on many occasions.

We joked about it, when, as we got older, we received those prayers for specific reasons.  She would pray special prayers for us as her kids or grandkids fell to the tempter's snare or found ourselves in situations or locations where she felt like she had to spend a little extra time on prayer for us.  (The Hallow-e'en where I dressed up as Morticia Gomez kept me on the special list for a couple of months...) But even when we were not in trouble, we were named each day.  Grandmother asked God every day to take care of us.

As I turn 50 myself, I am allowing myself the opportunity to look at the things that my relatives valued, and on this, the 100th anniversary of her birth, I want to write about the things that I learned from Caroline Gertrude McCrorey Lawton.

Number one:  "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will direct thy paths." 

Grandmama knew me from the start, and she wrote that verse in the flyleaf of the Bible presented to me at my Baptism.  She knew that her oldest grandchild was prone to learning, to trust in his own knowledge, and to challenge, challenge, challenge.  After watching me for years, she presented me with that Bible, knowing that it was important for me to know and think about that verse from Proverbs.

Reminding me that I was not to lean on my own understanding.

The thing is, Grandmama was not just about platitudes.  She lived the truth in that verse, modeling the behavior called for in that passage.  Not just the trust part, either.  I tend to focus on the first part, where I trust in God.  The second part of the passage calls for us to acknowledge him.  For her, acknowledging was not a superficial thing, but a truth lived.  She literally thanked God all the time.  She asked for his mercy.  She acknowledged his dominion in her life.

All of which are things with which I struggle.

I write on this blog a lot, and very seldom do I mention the God that I worship.  Not so with Grandmama - and hers was not a proselytizing approach.  It was simply a calm, steel-in-your-soul faith with which she acknowledged His presence in her life.

She also drank deeply in the promise of the verse.  She trusted.  She leaned.  And she acknowledged.  But more than anything, she allowed her path to be directed by God.  At the end of every prayer for the sick, she asked for His will to be done. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will direct thy paths.

Number two: family, family, family.  Every Sunday after church, the entire Lawton clan piled into the house on Sumner Street.  The house is no longer there, but the memories of every nook and cranny are vividly etched into my mind.  Every guest was welcome, and there was always enough food for everyone.  I remember 35 being a normal number of participants around the weekly table, as my twelve uncles and aunts (yup - seven kids) started to have their own kids, bringing them - and friends - over for Sunday dinner.

So every Sunday, she would finish preparations for the meals for an army.  Jell-o fruit salad, homemade applesauce, Lawton-canned corn and green beans, macaroni and cheese, seasonal greens, whop biscuits and a meat.  (Am I missing anything?)  We would all gather around the table in the kitchen while the wood stove pumped out warmth in a solid 3-foot radius, and she would start us in singing the Doxology.  It was always a guess as to where it would be pitched (Alto today?  Nope.  Soprano). And her reedy, but surprisingly strong voice would kick it off.  And all of us - visitors and Lawtons alike - would join in with four-part harmony.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow.
Praise him all creatures here, below.
Praise him above, ye heavenly hosts.
Praise Father.  Son.  And Holy Ghost.  Amen.

The Amen would always last a little too long, and around that laminate table we would always smile a little.  We were holding it out.... not wanting that last note to end.  Even with the promise of food, we loved that moment.  In it, we were joining with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven.  All of us family members, following the matriarch.

When you came to her house, you became hers, and she loved you.  Of course, she always loved her oldest grandchild best, but she loved everyone whose feet landed under her massive table.  The words of the doxology were, to Grandmama, your adoption papers.  And, most probably, landed you in her prayers, as well.

Number three: Numbers 32:23.  Her family members will not even need to be told, but for everyone else, the passage is a little lost proverb deeply embedded in the fourth book of the Bible.  We certainly heard it often enough: "Be sure your sin will find you out."

For Grandmama, it was a warning, but it was also tied to the other two tenets above: trust in the Lord and family.  Her family heeded her warning, and it was more than just a threat...

It was a statement.  A statement of belonging. 

By being kin - naturalized or adopted - you were expected to live up to standards.  You were receiving prayers.  And you needed to know that your actions reflected on her, on the family, and most importantly, on the one in whom she put her trust.

See, Grandmama's yard was the Sunday School yard.  Nothing there was tolerated that you wouldn't do in Sunday School.  You didn't use bad language, you didn't do bad things, and you didn't plot evil.  Not in Grandmama's house. 

By belonging to her, and to the Lord, you had standards.  And if you were covert in not living up to those standards, it was not going to be a secret for long.

Number four: Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

Part of the reason that Grandmama always had a child on her lap was that it was the best place for instruction.  I heard her singing lullabies to babies, holding wiggling toddlers, and loving on children all my life.  And with each one, she expressed love in the way that she knew how.  Those teaching have stayed with me to this day.

I trust.  I acknowledge.  I believe in family.  Yes, I know my sins will find me out. 

And now that I am old, I understand the importance of what she taught that wiggling little boy in her lap. 

Grandmama, I will not depart from it.