On the phone this afternoon, our fifteen year old granddaughter Mariah asked us to “Come back!“ Come back? Are you kidding me?

We had left her house in Branson only the night before. She’s getting used to seeing us now that we are there so often checking on and working on the house we’re building down the hill from them.

She put pictures of the house in progress on facebook. She’s pretty excited. We were home alone for awhile yesterday. Her mom and brother were at an out of town ballgame, and her dad and papa were working on the electrical work for the house.

Mariah came upstairs after her shower and found something rare—a quiet house. I like quiet, so while she was downstairs, I had turned off the television and the music and sat reading in silence. She flopped down on the carpet near me, and covering herself with lotion, said, “Ma, this is so relaxing!“ She was amazed by the rest that comes from quiet. 

When we finally move into our house early this summer, she plans on coming down for a dose of quiet every day. I wish all the grandkids, including the three Meyers in California, could come down every day for a dose of quiet or laughter or hugging or snacking or chatting or any good thing we enjoy together.

These are some of the components of having fun with the grandkids, one of the two things our daughters wanted us to do for our grandchildren—our job description I call it. I can’t think of anything easier or nicer than enjoying them and loving them.

Such joy is epitomized by what our first grandchild Jake did when he was fifteen months old. We stood together in the doorway of the living room while his mother sat talking to us in the glider rocker in the corner of the living room.

Jake went over to Stacey and pulled on her as though he wanted to take her somewhere and show her something—which was his custom at the time. He did, in fact, take her to the middle of the living room. Then he left her there, came over to me, pulled me into the rocker, and climbed into my lap and let me rock him to sleep.

Let’s see. How happy was I? Grandchildren seem to provide endless happy and tender moments. When Mariah was three she told her mom she wanted to go to “Jopin” so her Ma could hold her and watch “Dalmatians.“

Our loving them has made the grand children as happy as it has made us. Jake, when he was four and living eight hours away, told his mom one day, “Don’t talk about my Ma, I’ll start cryin’.“

We’re off to California soon to see sixteen-year-old Jake and the other two Meyer grandkids (and their parents of course), and I can’t wait. If you believe their very believable voices on the phone, they can’t wait either. Loving grandchildren—what a job!

The other task on our job description is as important as loving and enjoying them. Along with the Deut. 4:9 mandate to teach their children after them, Deut. 11:19 serves as written objective: “Teach them (God’s words) to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.“

Many forces work against their relationship with God, but we believe we can help equip them to be faithful servants of the most high God. We are trying to equip them by doing the four things we did to equip our daughters.

Do you hear four blogs coming right up?