The warm wind blew her silver hair across her face, a beautiful face with dark deep-set eyes and a map of wrinkles. Wrinkles that told the story of her ninety years on this earth. Years of standing beneath the blazing Arizona sun and picking fruit. Years of scrubbing threadbare clothes in a wooden tub of soapy water. Years of birthing babies and wearing them in a colorful cloth on her back, while her strong hands kneaded flour for tortillas.

She was my great-grandmother, and though she couldn’t read or speak English, she could grow roses in the heat of the desert and soothe wounds by snapping the stems of aloe vera plants. I watched her tend to her roses, her hands calloused and crooked from years of work and age, her fingertips indented from her rosary beads.

I didn’t understand it then.

As a little girl, running around her small house with my dirty bare feet, happily drinking the sweet fig juice she gave me from the tree in her yard, I wasn’t aware of the sacredness of her work. I wasn’t aware of her strength. A strength that raised four children, mopped peeling linoleum floors until they shined, and cooked large pots of soup to feed her family and her neighbors.

She was a quiet woman. She was a wise woman. She was a woman who taught me without hardly saying a word. She was certainly a Martha like from today's Gospel according to Saint Luke. A woman burdened by much serving, but a woman who nonetheless turned to the Lord.

Remember this in your serving, dear sister. Remember to turn to the Lord, to offer even the tedious burdensome things. Remember to offer Him your anxieties and your frustrations. In everything, choose the Lord.

[bctt tweet="In everything, choose the Lord. // Leana Bowler" username="blessedisshe__"]

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