The Faith of a Grandmother

This is a story my grandma told me when I was a boy.
Her Name was Alma Bauer. She was my father's mother. She volunteered at St. Columba Church in St. Paul Minnesota, where she was a parishioner. In this instance she was decorating the altar that reverenced the Blessed Virgin. She was preparing flower arrangements and placing them on the altar, probably preparing for a feast day. She had put an empty wooden crate on floor to stand on so she could reach certain parts of the altar. When she stepped on to the crate her foot went through to the floor causing her to fall into the broken crate. The wood splintered cutting into her leg and the fall caused contusions and bruising on her hip and leg. “Oh Paul,” she said “it hurt so, and it was swelled up and black and blue.” She cleaned up as best she could and finished her work in spite of the pain. As she worked on her altar she prayed to the Blessed Mother, asking her help to finish the work on the altar.
She went home and finished her day, probably cooked for the family and surely told them how she had become injured and how much it hurt. That night as she prepared for bed she prayed to the Blessed Mother again. She was in pain, but eventually fell asleep. In the morning when she woke she felt no pain. “Paul, I looked at my leg and that side from my hip all the way down and it was completely healed; no black and blue, no swelling, no scabbing. I was cured by the Blessed Mother.”
At the time she told me this story I remember experiencing some disbelief –I was still a boy. Not that grandma would lie, but perhaps in the zeal of her faith she may have perceived reality a little differently then the rest of us. But I don’t feel that way now. I have experienced my own miracles, not so dramatic and immediate as grandma’s story, but every bit as mysterious and unexplainable.
Today when I think of examples in my life of faith, that unconditional acceptance of and belief in God and an acceptance of what this temporal life deals out for good or bad, success or failure, wealth or poverty I think of my grandmothers. They were miracles in my life.

Note: The photograph was sent by my uncle Tom Bauer. I think he may have taken it. It is my grandmother with my grandfather some time in the 1950's.