The rhythmic hum of car tires on a brick street can be as therapeutic as rain on a tin roof, particularly as it echoes off stately Victorian homes set back just enough to allow old shade trees to soften the clatter and cool the air. The Village of Bremen still provides each of those elements in abundance, and I was heading there to visit a woman I had loved since boyhood. My piano teacher, Mrs. Ethel Lewis, was being honored at a reception and open house on the occasion of her ninetieth birthday.
As I approached her home, I was surprised to see the reception line had spilled out onto her sweeping veranda, reminding me she had shared her piano bench with hundreds of stubby fingered youngsters over the past fifty years. However, even in this crowd I knew I would be one of her favorites… because she had often told me so.
As the receiving line inched it way into the expansive foyer and I caught glimpse of her, my heart dropped to see this once astute and proper lady now frail and bent in a wheel chair, her trembling hands folded across a blanketed lap. When at last I was positioned before her, I carefully lifted her delicate hand and said, “Hi, Mrs. Lewis, it’s Ron Grubb.”
She turned her head slightly to one side and said through a furrowed brow, “Nooooo, you’re not Ronnie, you don’t look like Ronnie.” And then, before I could say another word, the receiving line moved me on as if on a conveyor… my right hand reaching back toward the woman I loved. I realized her dim eyes had failed to recognize the young boy she once knew. My heart sank.
I screwed on a smile and made my way through the punch-sipping guests to quietly slip out the kitchen door. As I drove off, I tried to process what had just happened. I tried to shrug it off with a chuckle, but it wasn’t working; my tear-filled eyes made it impossible to focus. I pulled over, wept silently for a moment, composed myself and headed home.
That was 20 years ago and I have often replayed that episode in my mind. I strode in naïve and nostalgic and limped out sad and disappointed. I was not only embarrassed, but I was taken aback by how deeply it saddened me. I longed to hear—no, I needed to hear again—her words of affirmation.
I’ve come to realize how important it is for each of us to regularly receive affirmation. Affirmation is to our spirit what breath is to our lungs. We not only crave affirmation—we require it. Deep in each of us resides an unquenchable thirst to be valued and to be given value. Affirmation is the assurance that we are important to someone for some reason.
Perhaps you’ve never considered how important you are to the Heavenly Father! You are so important to Him that He offered up His only son to death just so you and He can be together for both now and eternity!
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16
Be affirmed that you are indeed a child of God and that the sufferings of this life will never compare to the incredible glory you’ll experience when Christ welcomes you home!
Read Ron’s column, Simple Faith, each Saturday on the Faith Page (page 3) of the Lancaster Eagle Gazette, or visit www.lancastereaglegazette.com.