My phone rang last night at 10:40pm. It was my dad calling. Hm… dad calling at what would be nearly midnight Mountain time, I had a pretty good hunch as to what the reason was.

I was right.

Grandma Bendickson passed out of this world on the evening of Mar 19th, 2009 in her home, surrounded by her children. She was a prayer warrior, a survivor, and probably the most determined woman I ever knew. Most of my memories of Grandma seem to center around summertime (that is except for Christmas dinner of course). I remember she always kept cookies in the second drawer down, just to the left of the refrigerator. She was a ball of energy, scurrying around her kitchen, apron draped over her little pot belly making God knows what for anyone and everyone.

Grandma is also a very central part of my faith story. Around my second year of college the obnoxiously persistent case of childhood warts on my hands flared up severely. I was living in Boston at the time, attending Berklee College of Music and working part time as a cashier at a local supermarket. The bitter Northeast winter had made my skin so dry that the warts on my hands would crack and bleed. I was having trouble playing guitar. People at the supermarket would recoil slightly when I handed them their change, my hands all bandaged up. I felt like a leper.

Anyway, when I was home that spring I went to Grandma and asked her specifically to pray for my hands to be healed. I’d tried treating them for years and years but the warts always seemed to come back. My faith was, well… lacking at that point in my life but Grandma somehow had access to the “Red Phone” to God. She clasped both my “unclean” hands in hers, looked me in the eyes and said she would.

Within a few months, my hands were clear. That may not seem like much, but to me, after at least a decade of trying to treat them myself, there was no question it was anything short of a miracle.

Grandma suffered a very severe stroke in the spring of 1999. Next week would have been the 10 year anniversary of that event. Determined “not to miss anything” she soldiered on to bear witness to family weddings, births, baptisms and many many other family celebrations. Her greatest joy was having everyone home… being surrounded by family.

We know Grandma is finally home now… walking side by side with Grandpa once again (who’s likely been waiting patiently for her these last long years). I pray her soul is rejoicing and her body is healed, but I also know that there’s a part of her that will be bummed that she’ll miss the family gathering that we’ll have in her honor. She’s probably got God’s ear right now, trying to convince Him to send her back down for the party!

We love you Grandma.

Grandpa & Grandma Bendickson