After 30 years of quiet anticipation, I found myself in possession of my grandmother’s dining room table. My grandfather passed away some 30 years ago and within six months my beloved grandma came to live with my parents. I was living on my own at the time and one of my first thoughts was, “Who is going to take care of grandma’s table?” At 20 I had no concept of the intrinsic value of her table, but I cared about it, because she cared about it. My grandfather had saved for years to buy it for my grandmother and every Saturday from the age of 16 to 20, I drove to my grandmother’s house, took her grocery shopping, washed her hair, and dusted her table.
Grandma’s table for me was one of the first places I learned about sacrificing for those you love, and the importance of the family meal. Most often the table sat with its six chairs around it. But on special occasions, extra leaves were added and it no longer was just a table, but a place of communion. 80 years of love and loss, life and death, joy and sorrow, where shared around that table. For the last 20 years grandma’s table sat in a home that eventually abandoned its usage. Years of smoke, grease, and neglect had taken its toll on the wood. This is how it came to me, filthy, neglected, unappreciated.
I found myself getting frustrated at first, how could anyone pay so little attention to something that had been purchased by sacrificial love? Then I thought, how much like my soul was this table during those periods of my life when long stretches of time passed and little attention was paid to its preservation. How the build up of my trivial sins created a film over my soul marring its beauty and its light, just like it hid the beauty of the wood underneath. I thought how too my soul had been purchased by the sacrificial love of another. My frustration turned into gratitude.
As I gently remove years of grime and neglect from grandma’s table, the beauty of the hand carved mahogany underneath is being revealed. It’s not an easy process, neither is sainthood. It takes work and patience. Today I am reminded that through effort, God’s grace and by blood of his Son, I will enter eternity, and my soul will be refurbished to its original beauty. Just like grandma’s table.
