Grandma Moon lived with us for all of my growing-up years. In fact, I never remember a time when she didn’t live with us. Gram was the only grandmother, really the only grandparent, I had. I remember her clearly and fondly and often. Gram loved to read and be read to. She loved watching Merv Griffin at night and she always had a stash of Vanilla Wafer cookies hidden in her room that my siblings and I would, occasionally, loot.  She helped me learn how to sew, her mother had been a seamstress. She shared my love for fabric and we’d go on outings to the fabric store that would thrill nobody but us. She taught me how to crochet and tried to teach me how to knit. When I dropped more stitches than I knit, she’s the one who told me plainly, “Roxanne, I love you. You cannot knit.” Grandma and I shared a lot things…

When I was 45 I discovered that Grandma had also shared her hearing loss with me. I was happy to put down my knitting needles and, honestly, don’t really mind the hearing loss. In a weird way, I feel like it’s just one more connection to my Grandma and that, somehow, makes it okay.

I was the first of Grandma’s granddaughters to get married, so on my wedding day she gave me her cameo necklace. The one I always remember her wearing and never saw her without. It was a part of her. I wore it on my wedding day and have worn it on different occasions ever since. Grandma passed away in May of 1992. Making her necklace as precious to me as her memory.

Soon after Grandma passed away, friends of ours lost their teenage son in a motorcycle accident. I went to the memorial service wearing Grandma’s necklace. The service was packed, so I stood in the back, prayed, sang, greeted our friends afterwards and left with an assurance that, like Grandma, we knew where that young man was. It was sad, but not.

I didn’t change after the service, and I didn’t take off Grandma’s necklace. Cliff came home and we were moving our kid’s bikes from the front to the backyard, laughing as we tried to pedal little clown-size bikes up the driveway. While putting my daughter’s bike away, I felt something brush my arm and realized it was the chain, and only the chain, to Gram’s necklace. I was frantic. I felt my clothing to see if the cameo had somehow gotten caught there. It hadn’t. Cliff helped me look up and down the driveway, in the grass, and everywhere we had been. I looked in the car I’d driven, all through the house, it was nowhere to be found. I cried. Hard. Cliff prayed with me that we would find it, but I was still upset when we went to bed.

I woke up the next morning and prayed, “Lord, I know it’s not real important, but I know you’re a God of miracles…Please help me find my necklace.” I immediately had a thought to call the Church of the Nazarene where our friend’s memorial service had been. I had to wait for the church to open, but got in touch with the secretary. I explained my necklace to her and where I had been standing. She told me to hold on while she asked the custodian if he’d seen it. I, literally, waited with bated breath. She returned to the phone excited to tell me, they’d found it! I told her I was on my way. I threw my three kids in the car and drove to the church.

When I got there, the custodian shared with me what happened when I called. It’s a story I’ve never forgotten.

“I was vacuuming the back of the sanctuary when I heard the phone in the office ring. I didn’t know if the secretary was in yet, so I turned off the vacuum to see if anyone picked up the phone. When I realized she’d picked up, I reached down to turn the vacuum back on. It was then that I saw something shiny on the rug. I picked it up and at that moment, the secretary asked me if I’d found a small cameo in the back row. Had you called one moment later, I would never have seen it and would have vacuumed it up. It would have been gone forever.”

I looked at the man and cried.

I realized something that day. I realized that our Great Big God…the Creator of the Universe…the Creator of ALL things seen and unseen…My Creator…cared for me. I realized that if He cared enough to help me find something so small and seemingly insignificant as a cameo, if he could do that, there is NOTHING I can’t trust Him with.

He is faithful…always.

If our faith is greater than our fears, then life really is ‘not that big a deal’.