Mythology. Or something like it.

Every family has it's own legends- stories filled with the heros and larger-than-life characters of our pasts; the kings and queens we descended from. Sometimes, these are actually mythologies and not a bit of truth is in them. Sometimes, they're true.

My grandmother, Lois, at 15.

This summer my grandmother turned 100 and it was my job to scan the photos and make a slideshow for the gigantic party we threw for her. In the process, I spent a lot of time mediating on her story, which is connected to this other big thing which I rarely talk about.

My grandmother was fifteen when she felt called to preach. That was in 1927. A few years earlier, her father, a pastor, had gone down to California, to a place called Azusa street and everything had changed for them since then. Her father was subsequently kicked out of leading their brethren church and the whole family was branded as "holy rollers." After she was finished with high school, my grandmother went to the closest Bible college she could find which was all the way down in San Francisco. There, she worked in a street ministry and on Sundays she sang on the radio and did a Sunday school lesson. My grandmother was really close with her sister, Verna, and they were in college together.

After college, my grandmother and her sister became the pastors of a tiny church in Oregon. The town had 500 people and the church had 5 members but soon it grew to over 30 people. They rented a tiny house in those days and since it was during the Great Depression, the rent was $5.00 a month.

One winter my grandmother and her sister went out in the snow with some of the young people from their church. They had been invited to go skiing, but since it was so cold, some of the boys lent them some jeans to wear under their dresses. The very next Sunday, they found their church padlocked and it was explained to them that since they had worn boy's clothes, they'd lost their jobs. Early pentecostals, you know how it is.

Lois & Verna as pastors

After that, my grandmother and her sister worked in a mission in Oregon, and soon after they moved to California where Verna fell in love and got married.

My grandmother was alone after that and ministry seemed impossible.

She moved back to Seattle and got a job in a restraunt. One day, a soilder came in. They became acquainted and the soldier said he could find my grandmother a better job. Eventually, they fell in love and got married.

I guess this is the crux of the story. My grandmother felt "called to the ministry" ever since she was 15. As the legend goes, she knew she was never supposed to get married and certainly not to someone who wasn't a Christian. When she met Galon Elihu Prater, she knew and felt it in her heart that it would be wrong to marry him because he wasn't really the right man.

But she loved him.
So, she did it.
She was 24 years old.

This was once just a story to me. Things are different now. I feel as though I understand the story better. What terrible disillusionment my grandmother must have felt when she was fired from her role as a pastor just because she wore men's jeans in the snow. How lonely she must have felt after Verna got married and she was left alone in Seattle. As I was scanning the old photos of my grandmother in her 20's with her new husband these past few weeks, it all became so real to me. I get it. I get where she was coming from and I could never judge her harshly for the choices she made. Who doesn't want to fall in love? Who doesn't want a family?

I don't always understand God. I don't know why some people seem to land on this earth with a dream as far away as the skies and a lifetime of jumping toward the heavens to reach it. I don't understand why others are a bit more ambivalent about things like destiny or calling. Why do some of us feel like there's so much to do while others don't? What will happen if we don't follow our vague inklings?

It's something that we scarcely talk about. Even with my closest friends, it's a subject rarely breached. Oh, I've seen snatches and glimpses of the stars that some of my friends' are jumping for. But I know I can't expect them to be completely transparent when I, too, do most of my jumping and reaching in the dead of night while nobody is watching and when no one can see if I happen to trip and fall.  

I think about it all the time. I wonder if I'll make it, if they'll make it, if any of us heard right about what we're supposed to be down here doing. It's awful important for something that's so hard to talk about.

Maybe we're talking less about our dreams because of the dead economy. Maybe because some of us have become so disillusioned and confused about what to do with this thing called The Church. I certainly miss the days when I didn't question so much, when I didn't find fault in so many people.

There's a happy ending to the story of my grandmother. Years after she got married, after her husband had lived a long life and after she had raised kids and had many happy years, after all of that, she did follow her calling into the ministry. She sold everything she had a started an orphanage in the Philippines and it's still in operation today while my grandmother, who is 100 years and one week old lives at home with us and still whispers a prayer over every plate set before her. I hope that God is pleased with her. I'm sure that He is.

Some days, I'm full of questions that I don't know the answers to, but that's okay for now.

I wish that we all had the courage to talk more about our dreams.

He fought in both World Wars.

My grandmother.

Husband & their 3 little girls in Virginia.

Together.

The hotel they owned in downtown Snohomish.

The start of my grandmother's adventures in the Philippines.

Part of the orphanage...

In the public market..

Transportation. Does that little girl look familiar? 

Dinner time at the orphanage..