My sweet Grandma Johnnie Elizabeth Rouse

I have to remind myself that I do have such a good name especially from Lubbock to London when I’m in a throw down with a Barney Fife security officer at the airport not wanting to let me through or even a check out attendant in a store because I am always being questioned about my name.  My parents named me, their 6th child and 4th daughter, after my grandmothers.  My mother’s mom’s name being Johnnie Elizabeth and my dad’s mother’s name being Mary Bell — I could have very well been Johnnie Bell! But they forever call me beth.  I even like spelling it with the lower case because that is just how I see it in Elizabeth.  Even though she passed on May 17, 1995, I am thinking of her especially today.  It is just one of those dates.  She was born August 17, 1913.

Her smile in this picture just captures her spirit!  I have so many great memories of her and am reminded by Keith of one.  He could never believe how we treated her.  There is a time he remembers her bending over to pick up some M & M’s on the floor or something and she could half see and was sweeping her hand across the floor to try to find it and we would just holler out, “No, Grandma a little to the left! No, now to the right!” He never understood why we didn’t just get up and help her or pick it up ourselves! Who knows! It is just what we did! And it is funny now!

Also, our neighbors across the street were The Pickles.  She would open the door and ask, “Are you a pickle boy?” when anyone knocked because she just figured it was one of them coming to see if my brother could play!

Today my devotional was actually titled “What Is Your Name?” and the verses were in Proverbs 22 so I knew today I needed to stop and remember my sweet grandmother because “A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favour rather than silver and gold.”