Unprompted Words From the Heart

“I love you, Grandpa and Grandma,” my twenty-year-old grandson said before he ended our phone conversation. He is about to turn the ripe old age of twenty-one and will be married in less than a month. With all that, he thought to say, “I love you.”

I’m sure he didn’t deliberate over it. I’m sure it just came unprompted in the middle of a swirl of things on his mind to do, prepare for, and lists and lists to accomplish before the ceremony. But, he said the words my heart wanted most to hear. His impromptu, “I love you,” felt like a sweet message from Jesus, reminding me of His greater love.

I wonder how often I miss God’s unprompted, undeserved, displays of love He sends each day. The stable, true, and always-there-kind that I’m too distracted to notice. I wonder what my unprompted heart says to Him and to others?

That day I needed my grandson’s phone call reminder to finish my Grandma-ing well for the day. Because those words nudged me towards a truth.

Little boys grow up to be men.

I watched two of our youngest grandsons play flag football while another played basketball on a cement court behind me. My almost twenty-one grandson reminded me of the bookends. He hadn’t witnessed the frenzy of three younger boys getting ready in their daily preparations. He had his own big boy day to prepare for.

He didn’t think about days of lunchboxes in backpacks, water bottles, and cleats exchanged for a ring, tux, and shiny black shoes. A soon-to-be wife, new job, apartment, and “honest-to-goodness” adulting awaited. Life ahead looked like a gigantic wedding box wanting him to pull the ribbon and unwrap. Yet, it was only yesterday his little arms wrapped around my neck.   

After our phone call, with shouts from the younger ones in the background, his parting words lingered and I savored them like chocolate. The rich European kind.

His words echoed in my heart and smiled on my face throughout herding our youngest grandsons into the car, buckling up, and busy chatter of boy-comparisons and the pats-on-the-proverbial-backs of sports prowesses behind me.His parting words lingered and I savored them like chocolate. The rich European kind. Share on X

“Did you see me run, Grandma?”

“I almost intercepted it.”

And from Grandpa, “My grandson smoked me in hoops.”

That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:17-19 NKJV)

I want those men to love God with heart, mind, and soul. The way He loves them.

I’ve been so blessed to see the ends of a spectrum today. The youngest men charged with the unrestrained energy, which I am prone to continually want to calm, even squelch at times, and then, at the other end, a grandson about to embark on married life.

And, I am amazed despite my distraction of water bottles and basketballs, how truly significant it is to convey the simple unprompted love we hold for each other. I recognize how often I neglect to demonstrate the obvious but the most true of all relational foundations.

The rest seems kind of insignificant in comparison.

My grandson, about to start life with his bride, didn’t know his unprompted “I love you, Grandma,” touched a heart distracted by a pull and tug of younger grandsons. He had no idea of how much it awakened in me a desire to recognize God’s love in the mundane small things like string cheese, candy kisses, and waist height hugs.

Like golden bookends, all the years in-between my grandsons press upon my heart. They imprint the love of the Father stamped on time and generations.

“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!”  (1 John 3:1 NIV)

Open my eyes, Jesus to see Your lavished love in the ordinary pieces of life. May love guide my tongue, squelch impatience, and rise above dirty socks and flung backpacks. And let my unprompted words linger like rich European chocolate to be savored long after they’ve been said.

*Feature Photo by Philip Schroeder