Lotty and George

Ever seen those adorable old people walking down the road still holding hands and whispering to each other after 60 years? That's my granparents. Go back to the early 1950's, and the cold grey days and nights of Scotland. Meet George and Elizabeth McLaren who are waiting with their two young boys, Harold and Michael. They are about to get onto a boat, that, over many months, will take them to Australia - a land that they do not know but that they hope will be the answer to their prayers against poverty. A place that will provide some sort of stability and promise of a future that they crave after surviving two world wars.

But through it all, they are each others 'mates'. They're best friends as well as lovers.

For the next 50 years (and by His grace with more to come) they will lean on each other through the heights and the depths. Through births, deaths, marriages, divorces, children, grandchildren (and the promise of great-granchildren) - they are the one, for the other. For the next 50 years they will finish each others sentences. When Lotty holds George's hands and say "Oh they're cold" he will look at her and smile with love in his eyes as he replies, "yeah, but my heart is warm".

When I walked into the hospital yesterday and saw my poppy lying on that bed I had to turn around for a minute so that my tears wouldn't upset Nanna. After a big hug from my brother I could walk in and sit by his bed with the rest of the grankids. Sit, and watch.

Nanna (in all her 38kg's of glory) was fussing over Poppy, kissing him and just waiting for him to turn his lips up toward hers too - which, I am thrilled to say he did, many times. His movement and his words were few, very few. He couldn't move his left side, yet he could squeeze with his right hand. And even if he thought it was September of 1948, he knew who we were - and for that I was so humbly grateful to God.

When I was hugging Nanna she looked up at me with childlike eyes and pleaded "he'll be alright wont he?" Before I could get a word in she answered for me in a quiet but firm Scottish voice, "of course he will be - he has to be..." Han'som George squeezed out a couple of sentences while we were there but my favorite was when we were saying goodbye - and trust me I'm not just taking creative license, he actually said it... Nan and I were the last to say goodnight before leaving him to rest. I was on his right side and Nan on his left. The right and was warm and the left, through lack of movement, must have been cold because Nanna leaned in and said, "George you hand is so cold". And with slow, and slurred words he mumbled back, "heart's warm".

I prayed all last night (and thanks to for those of you reading who were also praying). When Dad called this morning I was not expecting him to tell me that he found Poppy sitting up in his bed, speaking, joking, and eating a cookie with his left hand. I was not expecting my often cynical father to ask me if this was the power of prayer - particularly since last night he was saying how unfair it all was.

But there you go - that's why it's God who is in control and not me. May His name be praised.