Endless generosity and bottomless orneriness came together in a sort of ragtime harmony in the life of my Grandma Pat. Or, rather, my husband’s Grandma Pat, but she would not appreciate me making that distinction (and certainly would not be too shy to say so).
Her faith was made sight last year at age 90. She was one of a kind, the sort of person that everyone who met her had a story about.
She was generous in the ways most grandmothers are: lavish with her praise, abundant in her encouragement, and bounteous with second and third helpings of food. Early in our marriage, we made monthly visits to her home in Sun City, Arizona. When it came time for my husband and me to head home, she would empty her freezer and half the refrigerator as a parting gift: crocks of leftover soup, bags of frozen veggies, small cups of fat-free yogurts, and stacks of Cool Whip containers that were guaranteed to be filled with any delicious thing except Cool Whip. Despite our protests, she would pile the food higher, insisting that she had enough.
Yet, it is not primarily Grandma Pat’s grandmotherly open-handedness with personal resources that comes to mind when I consider her readiness to share. She was marked by a distinct kind of generosity, that of self-giving love that transformed every part of who she was into a means of God’s blessing to others.
Our family often laughs about how the woman never took no for an answer. But in all the stories that most vividly illustrate that particular trait of hers, her persistence (or stubbornness, depending on who you ask) was rarely for her benefit or to serve her own purposes, but always to offer care to someone else.
When we were looking to buy our first home, we drove through a historic neighborhood in our city with Grandma in the passenger seat. We passed an adorable Victorian cottage with a For Sale sign in the yard. I commented on the scalloped trim, ornate wooden door, and lush corner lot with plenty of room for a garden, and before we knew what was happening, my father-in-law was made to pull over so we could have a look. Despite our protestations that the homeowners wouldn’t let us look inside without their realtor present, Grandma marched up to the front door with a confident smile on her face while I, a rule follower to my marrow, cowered in the backseat of the car.
She knocked on the front door, which much to my horror was answered by a woman with a kind, albeit slightly confused, expression as she took in the sight of a stranger on her front porch. I could see Grandma talking and motioning back toward the car, then pointing inside the house. The lady looked apologetic, shook her head, gestured toward the For Sale sign, and handed Grandma a small business card with the realtor’s info on it. Grandma lifted her hands in what I knew was only mock surrender, kept right on talking, and a minute later she and the homeowner were laughing like old friends, hugged each other, and then waved us inside the house for a tour, sans realtor.
Grandma Pat somehow made her love for shenanigans a gift to bless others, even if it often came with a dose of embarrassment for her grandchildren. She insisted on having the “First Annual Pat Mellema Memorial” several years ago, complete with games, costume parties, dancing, shared meals, and eulogies while she sat right there in the room, alive and well, laughing the entire time and correcting the details of our stories about her. When she moved to a care facility in the same town my family lives in, she made our Saturday visits a highlight of my kids’ week, racing them down the hallways in her electric wheelchair, sharing treats from her candy jar on the sly, or leading her great-grandkids in a loud, sugar-fueled procession through the parking lot like the Pied Piper.
Her joyful and absurd antics often placed her at the center of attention, but that was never her aim. She was a master at creating shared memories and lifting others’ spirits through her penchant for lighthearted mischief. G.K. Chesterton said in his beloved book Orthodoxy that “angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.” Grandma embodied that levity, and was generous with opportunities to forget for a while the weight of living in a broken world and to feast on the goodness of life together.
She would boldly tell anyone who would listen—including, more than once, someone who dialed the wrong number—about the love and redemption found in Jesus, and her generosity mirrored His in ways that extended the very abundance of God to the people in her life.
Just as we see Jesus attentive to and relaxed in the company of whomever He was with at the time, Grandma was generous with her presence. In her final months, she had a revolving door of visitors coming to spend time with her. Regardless of who was visiting or how she was feeling that day, she treated each one as though there was no one else she could be more pleased to see that day than them. She was not a rich woman, but she had a way of making others feel treasured.
But I think the aspect of Grandma’s God-shaped generosity that has influenced me the most is her wide welcome.
To her, there were no insiders and outsiders. When people would describe her as the type who never met a stranger, she’d reply, “Oh, I’ve met plenty, I just don’t like to let them stay that way.” There was room at the table, and even at the end of her life she was always on the lookout for those on the fringes who needed to feel that they belonged.
Grandma extended a sense of belonging wherever she went. At her funeral, one of her daughters shared the story of going to afternoon tea with Grandma. A man in a repairman’s uniform came into the tea room to fix something in the kitchen. Grandma asked him if he would take a picture of the ladies together, then invited him to get in the picture.
Her daughter then showed us, to the laughter of all the mourners present, a picture of Grandma, donning a hat fit for a royal wedding, smiling with the repairman. After the picture was taken, Grandma invited him to sit with them for tea, and since he hadn’t eaten yet and the repair could wait, he agreed. By the end of tea time, he was calling her Grandma Pat.
While I was not a stranger to her, she welcomed me from the start with the same open heart and open arms. Since the day her grandson and I were married, she introduced me not as her grandson’s wife, but as her granddaughter.
“I don’t bother with any of that ‘in-law’ nonsense,” she would explain with a wave of her hand. “You’re just my grandchild, and that’s that.”
She bragged about me to her friends, praised all my strengths, and overlooked all my faults, just like a grandmother would do with her own flesh and blood. She prayed for me specifically every single day. She freely gave me a name I could not earn—“granddaughter”—and shared herself fully with me.
I know facets of God’s glory that I could not have known apart from knowing Grandma Pat. As George MacDonald explains: “Not only … has each man his individual relation to God, but each man has his peculiar relation to God. He is to God a peculiar being, made after his own fashion, and that of no one else. Hence, he can worship God as no man else can worship him.” [1]
As we offer each other the generosity of being fully ourselves as an act of worship to God and of love toward others, we allow those who our lives touch to know God more fully as they encounter His image uniquely borne in us.
Even in the new Creation, where we will lack nothing, there will be a place for that self-giving generosity of heart that Grandma Pat displayed so beautifully, the same kind of generosity that eternally streams forth from the heart of God. Scarcity will be a distant memory, but we will still be giving our very selves—our personalities, our giftings, our passions—as an offering to one another and to God. And when we generously share ourselves with one another here in these aching days of the Already-but-Not-Yet, our self-giving is transposed into a participation in God’s kingdom as it comes on earth, even now.
[1] George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons, First Series, “The New Name” (1867).
The featured image, “Tulip Fever,” is courtesy of Amelia Freidline and is used with her kind permission for Cultivating.
Danielle Mellema is a contributing writer for Cultivating Magazine and occasional guest host on the Anselm Society’s Believe to See podcast. She writes about welcoming the kingdom of God in our everyday lives and experiencing the presence of the risen Christ in the cracks and crevices of our days.
She lives in a quirky 120-year-old Victorian house in Colorado Springs, CO, with her husband, four young children, and mini Aussie Scout. She loves reading and talking about books, exploring her wonderful and weird neighborhood, long conversations on her front porch, and recommending just the right local restaurant to friends (and strangers who did not ask). She is endlessly grateful for the privilege of receiving and releasing the gospel that heals alongside the wonderful people of International Anglican Church, where she serves as churchwarden.
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