It began to rain, so we found ourselves staying dry in the 1960s or 70s-something pickup truck. The truck was mostly blue, sort of like the sky, but the part that covered the cab was white. Most of our tools were in the back of the truck or lying in the pasture. You see, that day we were building a barbed-wire pasture fence. Sometimes we found ourselves driving a post in the ground, but occasionally there was a tree to which we would nail the strands of barbed wire. The rain soon stopped since it was only one of those summertime afternoon showers in Alabama. We returned to building the fence.
At some point we were nailing the barbed wire into a tree and my granddad, the Father of Sacrifice, started to do a little jig. This was a new one. From a distance you might've thought he was teaching me a 1940s dance, but up close I knew that he literally had ants in his pants. The ants had apparently sought refuge in that tree while we had escaped the rain in the truck. When we hammered the tree we must've dislodged the ants for a sky dive. Unluckily, he wasn't the only one to dance that day. We both grew tired of the ants.
That day was one of the many that we spent in the pasture. Some days we were hauling off brush, cleaning around the fish pond, learning to drive the tractor, or maybe taking care of our watermelon patch one year. Other days we worked in the shop doing upholstery work on furniture, boats, cars, etc. I just call him Gran, but even though I never really considered it, most people may have called him my boss. He really taught me Colossians 3:23-24. He didn't preach it to me. He showed me how to live it.
He loves his wife, my grandmother. I call her Mur. It's been years since she's called me anything because she doesn't remember much these days. I still love her. My granddad loves her even more than he said he would on their wedding day a long time ago. I hope I've learned to love like him.
There were times when he should have taken a break but didn't. He should have gotten on to me but didn't. It was the moments we sought shelter in the truck or the times I goofed something up or when we walked around the pasture without any real plan or we enjoyed a watermelon together or when we'd just sit and talk. Those are the times I learned the most. He still loves me and still thinks about me, and I him. I know that because he tells me and shows me. He often tells me when I'm leaving him, "Just always be a good boy, Ben."
Some of you who know him. He's a man of his word. He taught me how to do things right, to be fair and just, to be honoring and loving, and to live well. He taught me how to be a man. That's who he is and hopefully who He made me.
